JD: David Dolan, he’s the man who gives us an Middle East news update on a weekly bases. Now this is essential for you who are students of Bible prophecy. David let me talk to you about Russia giving a warning to Israel that if they make any provocative moves in the air space or with air strikes in Syria they may have to face the Russian military; pretty strong language for the Russians to the Israeli’s isn’t it?

DD: Very much so Jimmy, that was a senior Russian General who made that comment on Tuesday. He said that hot heads should not resume any operations in Syria meaning of course Israel. He said any provocative actions as he called it on Syrian territory would be met by a Russian response. So that is a very very serious statement.

But Jimmy it comes after Israel’s army spokesman last weekend said that the 34 rockets that were fired from the Gaza Strip in just a 12 hour period on Friday and Saturday came at the orders of the Iranian leader in Syria General Salami that he ordered his forces his allied Islamic Jihad forces in the Gaza Strip to open fire. And Israel said at the time the army spokesman talked about this as did the Prime Minister later on and they said we will indeed respond. In fact, in an off the record interview that Prime Minister Netanyahu gave he hinted that the cooperation’s are continuing. Maybe not major airstrikes but he said we are still on the ground doing things in Syria that we can’t talk about. He said, we haven’t given up that game.

So, basically this boils down to what we’ve seen before Jimmy that the Israeli’s fear that any action in Gaza will be met by a response not just from Gaza but from Iranian forces in Lebanon and in Syria and maybe from Iran itself. But Jimmy it’s that Russian threat from the north with Iran that is the main thing on the Prime Minister’s mind and the main thing on Israeli minds.

JD: David Dolan with the details behind the Russian military action against Israel.

We report this information because it is setting the stage for Bible prophecy to be fulfilled.

Russia has a large military operation in Syria there to protect President Assad and his people. The Russian warning to Israel of military action against the Jewish state is a page out of Bible prophecy. In Ezekiel 38 Magog who is Russia today, Magog will lead a major force against Israel. Daniel 11:40 says that the king of the north, that would be Syria today, that Syria will be the first nation to attack Israel. This scenario is ready to happen.

Patrick James Riley, simply known as Pat Riley, is a famous American basketball coach, a former professional basketball player, as well as a basketball executive. Pat Riley joined the NBA league in 1967, when he was chosen to play for the San Diego “Rockets” team during the NBA Draft. As a player, Pat Riley also …

Behold the TechnoImpulse Rocket Z – a Russian-built 100bhp diesel SUV built for the harshest terrain on the planet. With its winch, massive wheels, limited slip differential on both axles and almost no rear or front overhang for steep approach angles, this spartan little truck is made for agility, not speed. Yours for about €75,000. uncrate

Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 11/06/2018 -- Thermal battery is a primary reserve battery used to store and release thermal energy. It is a physical cylindrical structure comprising a stack of electrochemical cells, cathode, anode, pyrotechnic thermal energy source, and electrolyte sealed in a hermetic container. Thermal batteries, also referred as molten salt batteries or liquid sodium batteries, may compose a single series of stack of cells, or two or more parallel stacks of series cells depending upon their application. The metallic salt electrolyte in thermal batteries is solid at room temperature and exhibits excellent ionic conducting properties at molten state. Thermal batteries are primarily used in ammunition, space launching, and guided rocket applications owing to their long storage life and high energy density characteristics.

Thermal batteries are widely used in military, defense, and aerospace industries due to their high thermal capacity per unit volume, high power density, quick activation rate, uniform internal impedance, and better adaptability to robust environments. Increase in utilization of thermal batteries in military, defense, and aerospace industries owing to their exceptional properties and favorable attributes is anticipated to drive the global thermal batteries market. Advancement in material and chemical properties of thermal batteries in order to make them multifunctional is expected to offer lucrative opportunities to the global thermal batteries market during the forecast period.

Based on end-use industry, the thermal batteries market can be segregated into aerospace & aviation, military & defense, automotive & transportation, marine, utility, and others. The military & defense segment accounted for major share of the global thermal batteries market in 2017. Thermal batteries are widely used in artillery and smart ammunitions, bomb kits, guided rockets, tactical missiles, sonobuoys & decoys, and torpedoes owing to the long operating durations and multiple output voltages & polarities. The automotive & transportation segment is anticipated to expand at a rapid pace due to the rise in demand for thermal batteries enabled electric vehicles.

In terms of geography, the thermal batteries market can be split into North America, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Europe, and Middle East & Africa. North America and Europe constituted significant share of the global thermal batteries market in 2017 due to the presence of major aircraft manufacturers in these regions. The U.S., Canada, the U.K., and France are the leading aeronautics and aerospace component manufacturers. Increase in demand for civil and fighter aircraft is projected to propel the demand for thermal batteries market in these countries. Furthermore, rise in demand for electric vehicles is anticipated to boost the demand for thermal batteries market. Asia Pacific and Europe are prominent producers of electric vehicles; therefore, demand for thermal batteries market is estimated to increase significantly in these regions.

Joe
See I knew my brain would start remembering more once I read other commitments.
Definitely have fun skoot'n the cans across the top of the frozen snow. And what's fun to is you can check your hold overs out at distances in the snow. Well depending on what kind of snow you get. Powdery snow and you get a nice explosion of snow flying. Wetter snow then you get a nice hole similar to shooting into mud or dirt.
And I'm not going to say what we did with shotgun shells and pellet guns as a kid. I will say have you ever watch a rocket launch. :)

Ohio blue tip matches leave a nice smoke trail if glances a wall, circa 1970. And bottlerockets explode under water.
Partying on the Virginia side of Potomac river at night trying to reach the other partiers on the Md. side. They dont make it, but the orange under water flash was fun. Also trying to hit the primer caps on 40mm flares and .223 blanks wedged into the notchs of trees with our R1's and R10's. Stupid fun, yes. I survived the 80's, barely.
Have a nice day, R

Shares of On Deck Capital Inc. rocketed 32% in afternoon trade Tuesday, to pace the NYSE's gainers, after the online lender to small businesses swung to a third-quarter profit that was well above expectations, and raised its full-year guidance. The stock was headed for the biggest one-day gain since it went public in December 2014. The company reported net income of $9.8 million, or 12 cents a share, after a loss of $4.1 million, or 6 cents a share, in the same period a year ago. Excluding non-recurring items, adjusted earnings per share were 17 cents, beating the FactSet consensus of 11 cents. Total revenue rose to $103.0 million from $83.7 million, topping the FactSet consensus of $98.3 million. The company raised its guidance ranges for gross revenue to $392 million to $396 million from $380 million to $386 million and for adjusted net income to $40 million to $44 million from $30 million to $36 million. Janney analyst John Rowan raised his stock fair value estimate to $12 from $11 and reiterated his buy rating. "We continue to think that [On Deck] is a strong beneficiary of tax reform, which, coupled with a growing fee business and strong receivables growth, leads to a solid fundamental story," Rowan wrote in a note to clients. The stock has run up 54% year to date, while the S&P 500 has gained 2.9%.

Market Pulse Stories are Rapid-fire, short news bursts on stocks and markets as they move. Visit MarketWatch.com for more information on this news.

Today, Americans are heading to the polls for a chance to either show support for the Trump administration and its Republican Congress or to let the Blue Wave roll in. But first, we all have to wait in line.

According to the map, which was built by Google News Initiative and Pitch Interactive, it’s not just your polling place that’s overrun with people. For instance, at 11:53 a.m., the national average of people Googling “long wait times” spiked by 481% in Bluffton, South Carolina. At 12:24 p.m., that search was skyrocketing by 566% in Newburgh, Indiana. An animation starting at 6 a.m. Eastern Time shows these spikes hitting dozens if not hundreds of polling places around the country, especially around 1 p.m. Eastern–lunch time–and morning on the West Coast.

Line at my polling place is double the length it was in 2016. I have this weird feeling, like there’s air in my lungs for the first time in … a long time.

While some see this as a positive indication that more people turned out to vote in this election, others call the long wait times another means of voter suppression. After all, not everyone has the luxury to stand in line for hours to cast their vote.

A reminder that long lines at the polls are a sign not of a healthy democracy, but of insufficient funding for polling locations that makes it harder to vote, especially if your job isn’t flexible.

Whether you view it as a sign of hope or a sign of all the work that still needs to be done, do your best to stay in line. Even if the polls close while you’re waiting, you will still get a chance to vote.

When Miles Pinke and Chase Williams get together, these two all american, apple pie porn pounders put on one hell of a spunk filled fuck show! The heat is on the moment the camera starts rolling as the dirty blonds explore one another's amazingly smooth, supple young bodies, caressing each other's tight torso's before Chase's craving for cock kicks in. The blond bone sucker swallows Pike's massive, mile long meat balls deep, which is no easy feat. The kid's fat phallus is thick as fuck but, the sexy curve towards the thick, throbbing head makes it perfect for deep throating. Ready for his reward, Chase plants his perfect piece by Miles' mouth so, Pike pulls the kid's colorful cock holder's down and dines like a king on the dude's dong, even licking his beauitifully smooth, funk filled balls a bit. Williams can't control his desire for dick and jacks the guy's giant jock while Pike plays with his nips and continues cleaning that cock before craving some derriere for dessert. He hammers Chase's smooth hole with his tongue; then, slips his super human hog in the boy's uber hot hind end. He dirty dogs the dude and, Chase can DEFINITELY take a dicking! However, the dirty blond boner lover has a hunger for booty as well. He tells the twink to "switch" then, slides his thick dick inside his butt buddy and gets right to bangin' bone! In a super hot moment, Pikes' perfect piece pulses as Williams works his wang all the way inside the butt slut who's eyes are already rolling back in pure ecstasy. He moans for his tasty top to go even harder then, blasts buckets of boy butter clear past his own shoulder! The rest of his raunchy treat rockets towards his nips and falls onto his fuck flush flesh, spraying everywhere on his hard breathing body. Williams wacks his wide wand, wetting Miles' still throbbing semi and hot young pretty boy, porn star pubes.

The flight controllers for the first planned flights of NASA's massive Space Launch System (SLS) rocket are now in the hands of those refurbishing the RS-25 engines that help power the SLS' first stage.

From skyrocketing costs to lack of transparency, it’s easy to identify the problems plaguing today’s health care system. With all the negative news out there, it’s important to celebrate the positive. Here in New York, the Essential Plan has become a shining star and proven its ability to provide high-quality, affordable health care coverage to […]

U.S. rocket scientist Michael Armstrong and his assistant/fiancee Sarah Sherman are attending a convention in Norway. Michael is acting very suspiciously and Sarah follows him to East Germany when he apparently tries to defect to the other side.

The United States has said a Russian jet flew dangerously close to an American military plane over the Black Sea on Monday, putting its crew at risk. A US navy EP-3 reconnaissance plane based in Greece was flying in international airspace on Monday when a SU-27 overtook and passed directly in front of it, creating turbulence for the slower turboprop aircraft. About 25 minutes later, the SU-27 made another close-quarters pass and then banked away while applying the afterburner in its twin engines, which sent vibrations through the EP-3. The US navy said its plane had not provoked these actions and called on Russia to follow international standards to avoid crashes. “This interaction was irresponsible,” it said in a statement. “Unsafe actions‎ increase the risk of miscalculation and potential for midair collisions.” Pentagon spokesman Eric Pahon said the encounter put the US pilots and crew at risk. The two aircraft did not communicate although the navy plane had its transponder on, he said. A Russian SU-27 comes within a few feet of a US reconnaissance jet over the Baltic Sea in June 2017 Credit: Master Sgt. Charles Larkin Sr /US EUROPEAN COMMAND The Russian defence ministry said it had scrambled the SU-27 to intercept an “unknown air target” approaching its borders, but denied that any risky behaviour. “The fighter jet reported the identification of the American signals intelligence plane and accompanied it, not allowing it to violate the borders of Russian Federation airspace while following all necessary safety measures,” it said. Tensions have been running high as Nato holds its largest military exercises since the Cold War in northern Europe, manoeuvres that were largely meant as a response to Russia's own record-setting military exercises with China in September. Monday's encounter was the latest in a string of Russian intercepts that United States called unprofessional. SU-27s flew within five feet of an EP-3 in January and within 20 feet of a P-8 surveillance plane in May. A SU-27 came “within several feet” of another US reconnaissance plane over the Baltic Sea in June 2017. A British soldier fires a machine gun in Norway last week as part of the Nato Trident Juncture exercises Credit: Leon Neal/Getty Close encounters between the West and Russia skyrocketed in 2014 amid tensions over Moscow's annexation of Crimea and support for separatists in eastern Ukraine. A report by a London think tank counted 39 military encounters in eight months that year, warning that “more aggressive Russian posturing and the readiness of Western forces to show resolve increases the risk of unintended escalation and the danger of losing control over events”. In the most hair-raising incident, a Russian reconnaissance aircraft that had reportedly failed to transmit its position nearly collided with an SAS 737 passenger airliner taking off from Copenhagen. An American EP-3 had to make an emergency landing in Hainan in 2001 after a Chinese J-8 fighter jet crashed into it during an intercept, causing an international dispute. The Chinese jet broke apart and the pilot was killed.

Kevin Harvick gave the checkered flag to a young fan he brought onto the track to take a selfie — one with the winning driver and car that will have a shot at another NASCAR Cup championship. Harvick rocketed past polesitter Ryan Blaney in overtime Sunday, after the third restart in the final 35 laps

Legal marijuana sales exploded to $9.7 billion in North America in 2017, according to a report from Arcview Market Research and BDS Analytics. That represents a 33% increase over 2016, shattering previous expectations about how quickly the marijuana industry could grow in the face of federal prohibition.

The report also predicted the legal marijuana market will reach $24.5 billion in sales — a 28% annual compound growth rate — by 2021, as more state-legal markets come online.

Barry Odom cleared the air on Tyler Badie and Kendall Blanton’s injuries. Injuries to key offensive skill players have hurt Missouri’s production on that side of the ball, and although Emanuel Hall is officially back, three talented players — one starter and two backups — may have injuries that withhold them from this week’s game against Vanderbilt: tight end Albert Okwuegbunam (shoulder), true freshman running back Tyler Badie (foot) and tight end Kendall Blanton (knee). Head coach Barry Odom said Okwuegbunam and Badie didn’t practice Tuesday morning and could be questionable for Saturday’s contest. Blanton practiced in a red non-contact pullover. Okwuegbunam is one of the premier tight ends in college football, leading all tight ends in touchdowns (6) and ranks third in receptions (43) and 10th in receiving yards (446). Badie bursted onto the scene this season, despite sitting behind Damarea Crockett and Larry Rountree III. The true freshman has provided a nice spark off the bench and provides a formidable

It looks like "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," the game whose success paved the way for "Fortnite: Battle Royale," is coming to the PlayStation 4.

The game hasn't officially been announced, but files for the game are present in the PlayStation 4 game database, and the online PSN store.

"PUBG" is one of the most popular action games on PC, but it's been console exclusive to the Xbox One for the past year.

It looks like "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," the game that is largely credited with sparking the popularity of battle royale shooting games like "Fortnite: Battle Royale," is set for release on PlayStation 4.

While Bluehole, the game's developer, has yet to confirm a PS4 release date, fans have discovered files on PlayStation 4 consoles and in Sony's online PlayStation Network store. Last month the South Korean Game Rating and Administration Committee leaked ratings for a PlayStation 4 version of the game as well. A representative for the game declined to comment.

"PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," or "PUBG," was officially released on PC in May 2017 and has been console exclusive to the Xbox One since December 2017. The game was in Microsoft's Xbox Game Preview program until September 4th, when version 1.0 was officially released. The mobile version of the game is also one of the most popular video games in China.

Like "Fortnite: Battle Royale" and other games that it inspired, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" throws 100 players onto a single map with scattered resources. Players need to find weapons and items to defend themselves as the safe areas of the map begin to shrink. The last player or team surviving at the end of the round is the winner.

Though "PUBG" helped pioneer the battle royale genre, the game has seen its star wane, even as rivals like "Fortnite" have skyrocketed to success and challengers like "Call of Duty's" Blackout and "Battlefield V's" Firestorm continue to crop up. and. "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" has a smaller development team than those games and has struggled to keep up with the demands of a massive community.

In November of 2017, "PUBG" was averaging 1.3 million players each day, according to SteamCharts, which tracks players on Steam, the most popular platform for PC games. The average number of daily "PUBG" players has since dwindled to about 450,000 over the last 30 days.

Still, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" remains one of the three most popular games on Steam by a wide margin, alongside "Dota 2" and "CounterStrike: Global Offensive."

With "PUBG" available on multiple platforms, players are wondering if Bluehole will be able to implement cross-platform play. Earlier this year "Fortnite" became the first game to offer cross-platform play between the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile devices. Bluehole has expressed interest in allowing cross-platform play in the past, but nothing has been confirmed.

"PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" is currently available on PC and Xbox One for $29.99. This hypothetical PS4 version will likely carry a similar price.

Grassley, who was accused of anti-Semitism during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, has released a video in support of the white nationalist adjacent congressman Read More At Article Source | Article Attribution

It’s that time of the week for Profile Racing to take a look back on their history. This week we get a look back at 2011 when they introduced their Elite cranks, along with the Madera Helm sprocket. You can check out the full story of how the cranks came to be and more over

Beautiful autumnal day with lots of lovely sunshine albeit the air is a tad chilly no rain so that's good. Washing machine has been working flat out and all laundry on the line to dry one less thing to worry about.

Heard rockets and bangers going off here last night for a few hours don't think Patch was impressed though bless him.

The third MetOp satellite, MetOp-C, has been launched on a Soyuz rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana to continue the provision of data for weather forecasting from polar orbit.
Reported by ESA 10 minutes ago.

I understand Cutscenes is where Easter Eggs are I was only surprised there isn't a main Easter Egg hunt quest for Classified. They just made it round based, which is a little bit weird because most Zombies players well players like myself and friends don't aim for 100 rounds. Maybe Treyarch was setting a new bar. Usually my friends start searching for pieces scattered to put an item like the bow together or the rocket shield in BO3. Maybe Treyarch wanted us to aim for a hundred rounds.

I'm actually not too big on the Easter Eggs quests stuff. Personally, its just a horde mode that I used to like stopping by taking a break from competitive Multiplayer varying on the title. Some Call Of Duty games takw more skill than others. Thus, Black Ops 1 is my favorite cod its the least frustrating, well balanced, I love jump shotting corner campers, the weapons have recoil which makes winning a gun fight more satisfying, has a high skill set, killstreaks are so fun to use but aren't annoying and intrusive only sometimes.
I only like exploring the map, and it's visuals and art. I don't care about these quests man I just want to have mindless fun and kill Zombies i understand it has a skill set, but do you solve the Easter Eggs and find them yourself? Things like building a rocket shield is fun quests but I never in my life want to do the main quests. I like helping my friends or Solo searching for pieces for the first time it's really immersive.

Above all else, Skyrocket is a small team of individuals who care deeply about their jobs, and the impact they can have on the world - and we look for that...From Skyrocket Digital - Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:35:20 GMT - View all Vancouver, BC jobs

This is great article, with specific ideas about what is happening. But here is the rub: I am doing fine, I have enough money, and I am healthy. And I *KNOW* that social media is toxic - I understand completely about the problems of the internet. It has gone dark and toxic. But I am seeing something else -something more basic. It seem to be related to demographics maybe. Or something else? I am seeing a kind of generalized awfulness in our baseline technology, in our service industries, in delivery of medical services, in human thought process and ability to communicate using language, heck, pretty much every sphere of operational reality. And I've even seen the South Park Episode, where Kyle starts seeing "everything is shit.." (a hilarious episode, btw). No, I am actually seeing a real phenomenon, I think. People are becoming stupid, and I don't think it is because I am becoming smarter... :) THere is something, generally, really wrong. Even in music, I hear it - across all genre-classes or types. It is getting a bit scary. Everything seems to be just breaking down and getting really crappy, silly and either annoying or nasty. Even humor has gotten weirdly awful - You watch or listen to comedy folks, and their humor is ugly. Maybe it is too much digital stuff? CD's sound just *terrible* lately. I've got two record players, and they sound just *great*. I built a vacuum tube amplifier,and it sounds great. Maybe, our ears and eyes are telling us things we don't fully recognize yet. But that can't explain what has gone wrong with the "medical profession". There are no good doctors anymore. Lucky for me, I am heathy - but I worry about what this means. And science seems to have gone wrong. Nothing is being designed or built based on the research being done. The only purpose of inquiry, seems to be to generate papers and more papers. Nothing gets done. No new products are being created or designed. Our rockets explode, or are used for publicity stunts. We now cannot even reach our own space-station, much less the moon. The Apollo rockets were built using paper blueprints and drafting tables. We could not build one now, with our best CAD. Everything seems to be broken, crappy, ugly, dishonest, or second-rate. Or it is just gone. I am a positive person, and I am doing well. It's not about me (I have thought long about this) - there really seems to be - even off the internet - a clear trend toward increased crapification. The recent murder of Jamal Khashoggi is another curious example. Every child knows that embassy-compounds are bugged. It was an awful crime - but it was also done by an astonishing collection (15 guys?) of complete awful, stupid idiots. The Middle-East is more than just a tragic shit-show. It is also an amazing, expanding, grotesque crucible of extreme awfulness. The people are not all bad people -but the degree of awfulness is just so extreme. And Europe and UK and USA are not much better. The whole EU experiment is looking awful. And despite America's great looking economic results - the awfulness of their angry population is extreme - and this crosses party lines. Both the Democrats and the Republicans seem to be equally awful now. There is a drift towards the terrible that seems to actually objectively happening - it is not just my subjective sense of things. As I said - I am a lucky and content person - the awfulness seems to be everywhere, and getting worse. Is it just population pressure, maybe? Is Malthus finally being proved right?

How saving even unsung historic buildings keeps the city’s character intact.

Our town is nothing if not giddy these days with each announcement of a planning or development scheme. Vision statements and building starts percolate daily from many directions, or so it seems. A James River Park System plan, revising the downtown plan, a proposal to eliminate Monroe Ward's surface parking lots, the $1.4 billion dollar Coliseum-Navy Hill redevelopment, replacing the Diamond, establishing a historic district in Blackwell, and a sweeping, updated master plan for Virginia Commonwealth University are all in the works.

Then there are ideas to improve the Jefferson Davis Highway corridor, build new housing on the site of old Armstrong High School, develop a medical building at the former Westhampton School, and conducting an international design competition for re-imagining Confederate-infused Monument Avenue.

Scott's Addition and Manchester continue to blossom, while along Brookland Park Boulevard and its vicinity, developers are shifting pedestrian-scaled projects into gear. Meanwhile building cranes loom over downtown, Jackson Ward and the flood wall on both sides of the river. Newly topped-off buildings punctuate the Manchester and Financial District skylines as site plans are flying off drawing boards for taller residential buildings along the path of the Pulse.

And this just in: Public input from a recent Richmond Times-Dispatch public square meeting included one on the 75 item wish list: to ramp up the city's population to 500,000.

Whew.

But here's the thing, in our rush to be macro — that is, taller, faster, denser, more intensive and more inclusive — we need to keep a cautious and protective focus on the micro. That entails holding tightly to the things that make Richmond, well, Richmond.

Of course, a list of what those things entail varies depending on whom you ask, but many agree that Richmond is predisposed to conservatism, for better or worse. This go-slowly attitude means that the region is emerging from some relatively sleepy decades, compared to the go-go, boom-boom aggressiveness of such cities to the south as Charlotte, Atlanta and Miami. This also means that Richmond has maintained much of the architectural soul of what makes it special, even quirky. Many of our old and newer historic neighborhoods, from Church Hill and Woodland Heights to Barton Heights, Hermitage Road and Lakeside to Scott's Addition, have never looked better.

However, disturbing things can accompany so-called progress, even in a city that proceeds with caution.

While the dizzying growth of VCU is, on balance, positive, the population and physical expansion have presented some cautionary situations. In Oregon Hill, after years of attempting to balance town vs. gown dynamics while repenting for the sins of demolishing hundreds of houses for the Downtown Expressway, for instance, something unfortunate occurred recently. This past spring, a solidly built row of modest but dignified and handsome antebellum buildings in the 800 block of West Cary Street was demolished. It is being replaced with a 100-unit apartment building — providing needed housing, of course — but offering zilch in architectural interest in exchange for the loss. With a modicum of imagination, and another pass or two at tweaking the design, the irreplaceable historic structures could have been woven into the plan, maintaining a link to the neighborhood's past and applying historic preservation tax credits to financing the project. It would have been the right thing to do.

While the Pulse bus system has added new visual energy to a 7-mile urban and suburban corridor from Willow Lawn to Rocketts Landing, planners are seeking to intensify housing along the route with taller buildings within a zone that planners are calling a "transit-oriented nodal district."

It didn't take long for one developer to announce his concept for building a 12-story chain hotel a block north of the 17th Street Farmers' Market at 127 N. 17th Street. Sadly, this would inject the first high-rise building into the tissue of Shockoe Bottom, a district of old, low-lying buildings, mostly fewer than five stories. It is one of our city's most evocative places, and probably sacred as well, with the still-untapped reservoir of painful stories to be researched and told regarding decades of slave trading that occurred here.

The developer of the proposed hotel did offer an extenuating olive branch: His intent is to weave the century-old Weiman's Bakery building that occupies the site into the plan — and gain historic tax credits for the gesture. Would that other developers showed the same, well, if in not quite sensitivity, at least savvy.

Three projects now in the works provide similar cases.

Arguments are back and forth on the fate of the Intermediate Terminal No. 3 near Rocketts Landing. Stone Brewing Co. had promised to convert the concrete warehouse, built in 1939, into a destination pub and restaurant at the hulking remnant from Richmond's time as a transfer point for sugar from the Caribbean. But it reneged, citing the structure's instability. Meanwhile opposing lines have been drawn to whether the building is even historic or not.

Since officials at the state's Department of Historic Resources withheld its approval of a historic designation, corporate and city officials consider this a pass.

"The complex has lost integrity of setting, design, materials, workmanship, feeling and appreciation," weighed in another local historian, "Interpreting and advancing the story of the commercial shipping history in Richmond does not hinge on salvaging a structure that rests in a flood plain and is beset by numerous structural issues. The history of Rockets Landing and its environs can be told eloquently and artfully absent this decaying building."

But in determining what is historic we might apply United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's 1964 definition of pornography to what is old and historic: "I know it when I see it." If the Intermediate Terminal is the last survivor of what were once scores of riverfront buildings serving Richmond's maritime glory days, come on folks, it's historic.

And why would we even consider tearing down this 79-year-old commercial building? Restored, or left as a glorious empty vessel, it can be the building block, if not centerpiece, of whatever Stone Brewing might build nearby. Rather than either or, let's have old and new.

Consider. One reason our community has been slow to appropriately develop a visual narrative of the slave trade in Shockoe Bottom is that only one building still stands related to the heinous business. Old and historic buildings, architecturally distinguished or not, can be critical starting points when seeking to link the present and past. Lose the buildings and we lose that connection.

The same holds true of a threatened, 168-year-old building on West Cary Street near Nansemond Street that most recently housed a popular restaurant, Carytown Burger & Fries. The general consensus has long been that this worthy and solid, if battered, brick structure was a toll house during much of the 19th century when Cary was named the Westham Plank Road. The rustic highway, laid in dirt and wooden boards, connected Richmond with points west to the mountains along the James River.

Whether or not the toll taker actually lived here, is no big deal here in the 21st century. Today, it is the oldest house in the Museum District and more solid than most of the mid-20th centuries buildings that surround it. The historic resources department has decreed that it's not distinguished enough to receive historic designation. Maybe not, but it's at least 178 years old, for crying out loud. We're not going to have any more like it. Come on, save the darn building. The developer's description of the architectural plan for the proposed complex — a grocery store, parking deck and strip of shops— waxes poetic about how it will fit in with the historic aspects of Carytown. Such banter is cringe-worthy in the face of the loss of this tiny survivor of an important chapter in the neighborhood's history.

Similar goofiness is afoot in Scott's Addition.

It's shocking that a new apartment complex planned for Scott's Addition at West Broad and Summit calls for demolishing an architecturally elegant former SunTrust branch bank now on the site. The one-story, 10,000-square-foot building, built in 1948, is a top-notch colonial revival building that was built on the eve of modernism in Richmond. Its doorways and windows are handsome and its red bricks are laid in the Flemish bond pattern. If one squinted, it wouldn't be hard to imagine this as a house in Windsor Farms or Westmoreland Place where it would fetch $2 million and upwards. In fact, it was probably designed to catch the eye and serve folks who lived in those and less grand West End neighborhoods.

But despite it being a contributing historic structure to the official Scott's Addition Historic District, it is considered expendable to make way for a 166-unit apartment complex. The Summit, from what one can tell from a published rendering, has all the heft and charm of an Ocean City, Maryland, motel, complete with the name of the complex displayed in stacked letters on a prominent exterior wall.

Along with the glorious Handcraft Cleaners Building, a moderne masterwork, and the Blue Bee Cidery, with its rusticated cobblestone walls, this former bank is among the handsomest buildings in Scott's Addition. So why is it being demolished?

Probably for lack of effort or thought. Like the doomed, so-called toll house in Carytown, this classical gem, for some the gold standard in what Richmond domestic-scaled architecture is all about, could easily have been woven into the fabric of the larger development — and add grace notes to an otherwise ordinary design.

I know. We can't save everything. But that's the point: In the case of the Intermediate Terminal and the toll keeper's house everything else is gone. They are sole survivors. The former branch bank, that channels the spirit of Sir Christopher Wren, a late Renaissance English architect, is a standout because it is 180 degrees different from the stash of undistinguished midcentury modern warehouses that populate most of Scott's Addition. Ironically, it is the rare architectural outlier in a neighborhood that prides itself on being über cool.

These and other survivors and outliers are at risk. We shouldn't sacrifice what's left of our distinctive architectural patrimony for a transit-oriented nodal district. S

I didn't see this film in the theater. I don't remember why. I do remember that after its debut two different people told me their concerns about what they considered the film's unfortunate implications. Their issues, which I will mostly avoid mentioning here, put me off from seeing the film for a while. This Marvel film is designed to appeal to the largest possible audience. This movie was the fourth highest grossing film of all time. It's entertaining and long. This movie successfully combines action, humor and some bleakness. It raises some serious questions about morality and overpopulation. Most people won't get upset when it becomes apparent that deer numbers have grown to the point where deer are harming the environment and/or other animals and must be culled. Heck, even I wouldn't mind eliminating the invasive Canadian Geese who often stay in Michigan year round and make an absolute mess. Rational humans, even sentimental ones, can recognize when a particular species has become overly destructive. But humans resist recognizing this about themselves. There are 7.6 billion people on this planet. As recently as 1974 there were just 4 billion people. Humans have been very busy making other humans. A little over half of the world's population is Chinese, Indian, or African. As those three populations increase what will be the impact on carbon emissions, political power, food prices, climate change, wildlife, military conflict, ocean pollution, migration, etc? It may not be "good" from a First World standpoint or from the standpoint of the world in general. Some argue that free market capitalism can continue to produce enough for everyone. Others argue that socialism is the best bet for dealing with questions of scarcity and equity as we near a population of 10 billion.Others don't believe there is a problem. They say that people raising alarms are mistaken or regurgitating barely veiled racist eugenics. Some insist that it's unfair that some people are reproducing so much. Obviously birth control is warranted. Many feminists point out that women in most societies rarely want to have as many children as men do so improving women's education, health, legal protection, and financial and sexual independence slows birth rates.

Finally some people believe that there are already just too many people. Wemust reduce our numbers for our own good. The titan Thanos (Josh Brolin) is such an individual. Thanos has reasons both moral and practical for his stance. Thanos is a utilitarian. Thanos is not concerned solely with the earth. He intends to reduce sentient life by at least half on a universal scale. Thanos is not strictly speaking completely an omnicidal maniac as he doesn't want to kill everyone, but few people see the distinction, something which frustrates Thanos. Thanos is firmly convinced that he's the good guy doing the right thing. Avengers: Infinity War is about the titular team along with some other superheroes trying to stop Thanos.The film is unusual in that, apparently purposely, it centers Thanos as the hero. It's Thanos who is misunderstood. It's Thanos who has to sacrifice and struggle to reach his goal. It's Thanos who is betrayed, outnumbered and must stand alone against his enemies. YMMV on this but with the possible exception of Thor (Chris Hemsworth) I didn't get a heroic vibe from any of the "good" guys. Hemsworth is just that cool.

It's Thanos who was behind many of the events in the prior Avengers or other Marvel Cinematic Universe movies. Thanos has been searching for the six Infinity Stones. If he gets them all he will have the power to manipulate time, space and reality. Instantaneously, he will be able to eliminate half of the universe's population. He won't have to do it the long way by hand with his armies. Having grown tired of working thru agents and dupes, Thanos reveals himself (well at least reveals himself to Earth) and starts to gather the Infinity Stones he doesn't yet have. Even without all of the Infinity Stones, Thanos is a formidable adversary, ready, willing and able to go toe to toe with heavyweights like Thor or the Hulk (Mark Ruffalo) and more than hold his own.

During Thanos' quest to take all of the Infinity Stones for himself he runs into many people attempting to stop him, including but not limited to the aforementioned Thor and Hulk, Captain America (Chris Evans), Iron Man (Robert Downey Jr.), Spider-Man (Tom Holland), Black Widow (Scarlet Johansson), Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), Black Panther (Chadwick Boseman), Groot (Vin Diesel) Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson), War Machine (Don Cheadle), Drax (Dave Bautista), Loki (Tom Hiddleston), Vision (Paul Bettany), Scarlet Witch (Elizabeth Olsen), Heimdall (Idris Elba), Gamora (Zoe Saldana), Rocket (Bradley Cooper), Star-Lord (Chris Pratt), and The Falcon (Anthony Mackie). A fan favorite from HBO's Game of Thrones also makes an extended cameo.There are fights, fights, and more fights, and lots of snarky superhero one-liners. These are punctuated by misunderstandings, doomed love stories, humor and ruminations on why the struggle is necessary. The special effects are outstanding. There are plenty of references to past and future Marvel films crammed into this movie. Blink and you'll miss them. However they are not necessary to enjoy the film. There is obviously violence but it's generally not explicit. The actress Elizabeth Olsen expressed some displeasure about the revealing costume she wore in this film and previous Avengers' installments. I think the directors/producers heard her. The directors reduced but did not eliminate the number of downblouse fanservice camera shots. Again the film seamlessly integrated humor with the unusual for Marvel films feeling that anyone can die. There is loss here. The film missed some opportunities in having Wakanda as backdrop.TRAILER

Montreal internet marketing company OODA Rocket SEO launched an updated range of SEO, reputation management and online branding services to help local businesses improve their digital presence, increase their local Google ranking and expand their market reach.

This winter’s free-agent class is the most interesting in ages, thanks to the two players at the top — the first and third overall picks in the 2010 draft, both just 26 years old, both viewed as controversial (often without merit) for how they play, both, as Eleanor and Chidi might say, really forking good. […]

Comings and goings: East Stroudsburg University football coach Denny Douds explains why he chose to call time-out with 0:13 left in a game to announce his retirement after 43 years in charge of the program

Sporting News - It's early still, but soon we'll have a decent enough sample size to say some definitive things about players and teams around the league. Who jumped out to a fast start in Sporting News' NBA Power...

The U.S. Army awarded Raytheon Company a $191 million contract for Ku-band radio frequency radars. KuRFS, an advanced electronically scanned array system, fills an immediate U.S. Army operational need for a counter-unmanned aerial vehicle radar. Already deployed, KuRFS delivers precision fire control as well as “sense and warn” capability for multiple missions including detection of rocket, artillery, mortar and […]

Vaping is the act of inhaling and exhaling the aerosol, often referred to as vapor, produced by an e-cigarette. Studies show this practice is skyrocketing teenagers. One study noted that 1.7 million high schoolers and 500,000 middle schoolers said they had used e-cigarettes in the previous 30 days. In today’s blog post, M. Christopher Marshall, […]

There are a large quantity of landlords that are supportive of lenders not allowing benefit claimants to be granted tenancies with buy-to-let properties. After a recent out of court settlement made by a letting agent for a sexual discrimination action because it was claimed that most Housing Benefit claimants are female, landlords wouldn't want to potentially face similar discriminatory action when their decisions are based purely on business best practise which intends to minimise risks and maximise returns on their investments.
It's not rocket science to want to choose tenants with greater affordability and who are more likely to meet rental payments on-time, avoid accumulating arrears, not going to end in debt retrieving action and/or evictions through the courts and not end up with bad debt write-offs.
Also, landlords want to choose tenants for reasons such as ones who are more likely to adequately heat and ventilate their properties in order that they are able to be maintained to a higher standard and avoid resulting in the unnecessary repair costs for example.
A small landlord is very often not well positioned to be able to defend potential discriminatory action that would only really be abusing what was their prudent and wise business sense decisions. Landlords want to make these decisions for the very same reasons lenders make these clauses with buy-to-let mortgages. Landlords would be fearful of facing discriminatory action being taken against them, they wouldn't be able to advertise with such wording as 'No benefit dependencies will be considered', and they would also have to potentially waste a lot of time in arranging viewings and showing people their properties knowing that they are not strong enough applicants to support their tenancies.
Surely the answer for benefit dependent tenants lies somewhere else other than forcing landlords to have to take unnecessary risks with their investments.

The Palestinian Authority regularly demonizes Jews, Israelis, and those who they call "settlers" and accuse them of believing in precisely the hate ideologies the PA itself espouses to its own people.

While accusing Israelis of participating in a religious war, it is Mahmoud Abbas' advisor who has called Israel "Satan's project" and presented the war with Israel as a religious war to destroy Israel and Jews. The PA Mufti, who is appointed by Abbas, has said extermination of Jews is a religious obligation and Islamic destiny.

In Israel, the isolated cases of Israeli terror against Palestinians are punished and condemned. It is the Palestinian Authority under direct instructions of Mahmoud Abbas that rewards murderers of Israelis with high salaries and calls terrorist murderers "stars in the sky of the Palestinian people."

In this op-ed in the official PA daily, the writer projects the PA's own hate ideologies onto what he refers to as Israeli "settlers." They are demonized as inhuman murderers who kill Palestinians for their own pleasure and at the orders of the Israeli government.

Under the headline "The settlers are sacrificing the Palestinians' blood as a sacrifice to Netanyahu," regular columnist for the official PA daily, Muwaffaq Matar, who is also a member of the Fatah Revolutionary Council and hosts a TV program on Fatah-run Awdah TV, portrayed Israelis living beyond the Green Line as "mass murderers obsessed with bloodshed" who are "directed" and controlled by the Israeli army and government:

"Criminals, mass murderers, obsessed with bloodshed, wild unbridled foreigners, but also directed - these are the settlers, the colonialists, the pawns of the racist regime in Tel Aviv.[They are] criminals who are being activated by a remote control with dual controls - one in the hands of the heads of the occupation army, and the second in the hands of the heads of the coalition of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu's government. Both of them are trying to inflict a heavy toll on the Palestinian citizens by means of groups of people devoid of the elements of human nature, who have no connection to the civilized societies other than [their] human form..." [Official PA daily Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, Oct. 14, 2018]

Anyone with even a passing interest in news from the Middle East will know that all over the region, undemocratic and repressive regimes use their security forces to suppress dissent. The Palestinian authorities in Gaza and the West Bank are no exception, as a recently released Human Rights Watch report documents.

Considering that the report is “the result of a two-year investigation,” it is remarkably meager. According to the summary, HRW exposes the “machineries of repression to crush dissent” by showing that Palestinian authorities in the West Bank and Gaza “routinely arrest people whose peaceful speech displeases them and torture those in their custody.”Why Israel Is Right To Expel Human Rights Watch’s Omar Shakir

While this might give the impression that the report focuses exclusively on the abuse of people arrested for “peaceful speech,” there are also chapters that deal with cases of people accused of criminal charges in Gaza and the West Bank.

But what the report leaves out is perhaps more noteworthy than what it covers. A glimpse of what’s missing is provided on page 51, where one sentence suffices to deal with the most egregious abuses:

“Hamas authorities have also carried out 25 executions since they took control in Gaza in June 2017 [sic! Hamas took control in June 2007], including 6 in 2017, following trials that lacked appropriate due process protections and courts in Gaza have sentenced 117 people to death, according to the Palestinian Center for Human Rights.”

In other words, a report that is touted as “the result of a two-year investigation” relies on another human rights organization to provide a one-sentence summary of executions carried out by Hamas. Presumably, two years were too short for the hard-working people at HRW to check their own records, which indicate that Hamas carried out considerably more than “25 executions” since taking power in 2007.

But the appalling sloppiness displayed by HRW when it comes to keeping track of the murderous record of the Islamist terror group that rules Gaza is a telling sign of how little Palestinian human rights matter to HRW when Israel can’t be blamed.

Khan al-Ahmar is a cluster of Bedouin structures located in the Judean Desert to the east of Jerusalem. This past year this subject has been heating up. It is located on public land and is situated on the main route connecting Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley. Twenty-eight Bedouin families live there. It is too small to really be called a village, so some label it as a hamlet or even other terms. The structures in Khan al-Ahmar were not erected with any sort of building permit, as required by Israel's Civil Administration in the West Bank.

Accordingly, demolition orders were issued in 2009. Though the residents turned to the Israeli Supreme Court, in its ruling the Court stated: "there is no dispute that the entire complex was put up in violation of the zoning laws." In the past the Israeli Supreme Court ruled that Jewish families living in illegally constructed dwellings needed to be removed, as was the case in Migron (2012), Amona (2017), and Netiv Ha-Avot (2018).

Some Western commentators have fundamentally misunderstood Israel's decision to dismantle Khan al-Ahmar. A New York Times analysis insisted that Israel sought "to make room for the expansion of Jewish settlements." Of course, anyone familiar with the topography of the West Bank, with the map of the West Bank, knows that the Judean Desert is full of empty territory, so that the argument that the demolition of Khan al-Ahmar was required for settlement expansion really rings hollow.

The Shin Bet's efforts were a major factor in the ‎defense establishment's ability to maintain the ‎fragile calm between Israel and the Palestinians, ‎especially in Judea and Samaria, Argaman said.‎

‎"The situation in the Palestinian arena has been ‎‎very unstable this year. In the Gaza Strip, we are ‎somewhere between a potential [military] campaign ‎and efforts to ‎stabilize the humanitarian situation," he told the committee.

‎"In Judea and Samaria the situation is very ‎complex ‎as well. Things on the ground are ‎relatively calm, but this calm is deceptive. The ‎situation is actually highly combustible."‎

Argaman continued, "Hamas is constantly trying to launch terrorist attacks in and from Judea and ‎Samaria.

"We were able to prevent 480 major ‎terrorist attacks, stop 590 lone-wolf terrorists and ‎arrest 219 Hamas cells. This indicates that there is ‎a large, clandestine terrorist infrastructure ‎there."

Hamas leaders in Gaza and Turkey are sparing no ‎effort to mastermind terrorist attacks in Judea and ‎Samaria, and similar efforts are being made from ‎‎Lebanon by the Hezbollah terrorist group, Argaman said.

Hezbollah has threatened Israel’s northern border for decades. Today, however, the nature of this threat has become dire, and the risks of escalation real, as Iran continues supplying Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon with game-changing weapons to devastate the Israeli homeland.

When the next conflict erupts between Israel and Hezbollah, its scale and intensity will bear little resemblance to those of recent memory. Hezbollah today is highly competent, adaptable and lethal. Its forces have gained invaluable battlefield experience in Syria and amassed more weaponry than 95 percent of the world’s conventional militaries, including at least 120,000 rockets and missiles. This is more than all of Europe’s NATO members combined, and ten times as many as when it last went to war with Israel in 2006.

Especially troubling is Hezbollah’s growing arsenal of powerful long-range precision missiles capable of striking targets throughout Israel. Unlike in recent conflicts, Israel’s missile defenses will be incapable of shielding the nation from such a threat. From the outset of conflict, Hezbollah will be able to sustain a launch rate of more than 3,000 missiles per day – as many as Israel faced in the entire 34-day conflict in 2006.

Despite this quantum leap in its capabilities, Hezbollah is under no illusion about its ability to inflict military defeat on Israel. It will not seek victory in the valleys of Lebanon or the skies over Israel, but in the court of public opinion.

To do so, it will use combat operations to lay the groundwork for an information campaign delegitimizing Israel. Two tactics will be central to Hezbollah’s efforts: first, deliberately attacking Israeli civilian population centers to compel an aggressive response by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF); second, illegally exploiting the presence of Lebanese civilians to shield itself from IDF attack.

Hezbollah will then manipulate the inevitable casualties by relying on widespread misperceptions about the true nature of combat operations and how international law (the law of armed conflict, or LOAC) regulates such operations. It will use the inevitable images of civilian suffering in Lebanon to portray Israel’s lawful operations as immoral and illegal. By weaponizing information and the law, Hezbollah will seek to force Israel to halt its self-defense campaign before the IDF can achieve decisive victory.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly told lawmakers in his governing Likud party on Monday that powerful countries can occupy territories and transfer populations without consequence, in an apparent reference to ostensible Arab indifference toward Israel’s control over the West Bank.

“Power is the most important [component] of foreign policy. ‘Occupation’ is baloney. There were huge countries that have occupied and transferred populations and no one talks about them,” Netanyahu was quoted by Army Radio as saying Monday, in the closed-door Likud faction meeting. The remarks were also carried by the Yedioth Ahronoth daily on Tuesday morning.

“Power changes everything and it changes our policies vis-a-vis Arab states, and there are other countries on the way,” he reportedly added, apparently referring to states that have covertly expressed interest in forging diplomatic ties with the Jewish state.

The prime minister also appeared to reject the notion that Israeli territorial concessions could bring peace, according to additional comments from the meeting published by Yedioth on Tuesday.

“Contrary to the notion that concessions will bring about agreements with the Arabs, concessions will only bring about slight and short-term changes and nothing more,” Netanyahu said, seemingly referring to ceding territory to the Palestinians. “What we need to do is advance [talks] on shared interests with Israel based on technological power.”

Netanyahu’s reported comments came after he visited Oman last month in the first official meeting between the leaders of the countries since 1996.

Speaking at a Likud party meeting, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that the demonstration of strength is the most important thing in Israel's foreign policy.

"'Occupation' is bull. There are countries that have conquered and replaced entire populations and the world keeps silent. Strength is the key, it makes all the difference in our policy towards the Arab world."

Netanyahu stressed that concessions are perceived as weakness in the Middle East . "As opposed to the perception that concessions promote agreements with the Arabs, they would only bring minor and short-term changes—nothing more.

"The right thing to do is to make progress through common interests, which are based on technological strength," the premier explained. (h/t Elder of Lobby)

Prompted by Israel calls to condemn the Palestinian Authority for rewarding terrorism, the Dutch Parliament will host an event later this week to hear from prominent activists who are spreading awareness about the so-called “pay-to-slay” initiative.

Director of the Israel-based nongovernmental organization Palestinian Media Watch Itamar Marcus and terror-attack survivor Kay Wilson will travel to the Hague to address Dutch politicians about the P.A. giving convicted terrorists and their families huge salaries. Marcus and Wilson were invited by Dutch parliament member Joël Voordewind, who invited Marcus and Wilson, and will be chairing the discussion.

The move was endorsed by Yesh Atid Party minister Elazar Stern.

Stern has called on “the Parliament of the Netherlands to send a clear message that the P.A. must stop financially rewarding the terrorists.”

The Netherlands gives more than $14.8 million annually to UNRWA, the United Nations agency that deals with the Palestinian refugee issue. The United States cut its funding to UNRWA in September.

“It is important to update the Dutch Parliament that the P.A. has ignored all resolutions demanding they stop rewarding terror,” said Marcus. “While in some years the P.A. attempted to deceive the international community and conceal the payments, in its 2018 budget, the P.A. openly allocated 1.2 billion shekels [288,000,000 euros] for payments to terrorist prisoners and families of ‘martyrs.’ ”

An Israeli cabinet minister has warned that if the Syrians use their recently supplied advanced Russian air defense missiles to bring down Israeli planes over Israeli territory, the launchers would be targeted — even if that means endangering Russian military specialists at the launch sites.

Environmental Protection Minister Ze’ev Elkin, who is also co-chair of the Russia-Israel Intergovernmental Commission, told Russian media Monday that it was a “big mistake” for Moscow to supply its ally Syria with the S-300 missile system, because the advanced missiles, which are considered a significant threat to Israeli air power in the area, “might lead to destabilization of the situation.”

Elkin cautioned that “considering the mess” that the Syrian army was in, the Syrians cannot be trusted to operate the equipment correctly and may end up shooting down an “Israeli military or commercial plane over Israeli territory.”

Israel, he noted, reacts to attacks on its territory and aircraft with “practical actions,” which would “undoubtedly take place” against the launchers should Israeli aircraft be hit in Israeli airspace.

“I greatly hope that there would be no Russian military specialists [at the missile launch sites],” he said, stressing that in the past Israel has taken pains to ensure that Russian military personnel are not hurt through its actions in Syria.

The IDF has ordered the partial demolition of the home of the terrorist responsible for the deadly shooting attack in the Barkan industrial zone last month.

On Tuesday, the Head of the IDF’s Central Command, Maj.-Gen. Nadav Padan issued the demolition orders for two stories of the home where Naalwa lived in the West Bank village of Shweika near Tulkarem.

According to the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit, the order was signed after a request was made by the attacker’s family against the demolition order was rejected.

Nevertheless the home will remain partially intact, with the demolition to be limited to basement and ground floor of the building.

In early October 23 year-old Ashraf Walid Suleiman Na’alwa shot dead Kim Levengrond-Yehezkel, 29, of Rosh Ha’ayin, and Ziv Hagbi, 35, from Rishon Lezion. He also is suspected of shooting a third woman, seriously injuring her.

Israeli security forces on Sunday searched the offices of the PA’s Jerusalem Affairs Ministry in Dahiyat al-Barid, a West Bank village located north of Jerusalem.

Palestinians said that IDF soldiers and security officers confiscated many documents and computers. Several employees were summoned for questioning at Jerusalem police headquarters.

The raid on the offices of the PA ministry, which also includes the headquarters of the PA “Governorate of Jerusalem,” came in the context of Israel’s efforts to enforce a law that bans the PA from operating inside the country.

Israel says that the Palestinians had been acting in violation of the Law for the Implementation of the Agreement on the Gaza Strip and Jericho Area – Restriction on Activity – 1994, which prevents the PA from carrying out political, governmental or similar activity within the area of the State of Israel, including in east Jerusalem.

In recent months, however, the PA has increased its activities in east Jerusalem, prompting Israeli authorities, to take a number of measures to combat the phenomenon. The measures include, among other things, the arrest of scores of PA-affiliated activists and officials in east Jerusalem and the ban of dozens of events organized by the PA and other Palestinian political groups.

Yassin Abu Sidra, 24, stands at the top of an 18-meters-high tower on the border of the Gaza Strip, near Kibbutz Be'eri, and scans the area from morning till nightfall looking for fires.

Since the Palestinians began flying incendiary balloons and kites into Israel some seven months ago, this has been his mission.

Abu Sidra, a lookout for Keren Kayemeth LeIsrael (KKL), is the first to spot the incendiary balloons and kites and helps preventing the fire from spreading by sending firefighting forces to the scene.

This job requires him to constantly be on alert. In recent months, he hasn't had a moment's rest. From the top of the observation tower he can see the Be'eri Forest, the Kissufim Forest, the Shokeda Forest and the farmland of the Israeli communities by the border.

He has already spotted hundreds of incendiary balloons and kites and directed firefighting forces to where they landed.

"There were days of 30-40 fires a day," Abu Sidra says. "The firefighting forces ran from one scene to the next, rushing to get there to prevent the spread of the fire."

According to some reports, “Triple A” A’ed Abu Amro – otherwise known as shirtless terrorist who George Takei crushed on – has been shot.

Multiple reports from Gaza say that the 20-year-old protester photographed last month with a slingshot and a Palestinian flag was among those injured by Israeli troops in the most recent protests.

A’ed Abu Amro was among those injured by Israeli sniper fire on Monday, according to multiple activists and journalists reporting from the area. Photos show him being carried away on a stretcher.—Abu Amro appears to have been shot in the leg and is recovering at a Gaza hospital.

Except the photos of him on the stretcher seem to tell a different story – perhaps phasers were set to stun

In other words, just like everything else about this “protester” and the cause he represents, it seems to be a lie.

Egypt is discussing a new draft law that would prevent women from wearing a burqa (nikab) in public spaces as part of a government campaign against extremist interpretations of Islam. The burqa, used mainly in Islamic cultures, is the veil that covers a woman’s entire face except for the eyes.

On Saturday, Ghada Ajami, a lawmaker, submitted a bill in the Egyptian parliament calling for a fine of 1,000 Egyptian pounds ($56) for women who defy the proposed ban. The fine would double for repeat offenders.

Ajami stressed to the press that the purpose of the bill is “to support the state’s efforts in fighting terrorism.”

A copy of the draft bill obtained by The Media Line states that the burqa would be prohibited in Egyptian public spaces “at any time and under any circumstances.”

Public spaces would include hospitals, health clinics, schools, cinemas, theaters, public libraries, museums, and government buildings, among others.

Ahmad Sharbini, an Egyptian political analyst, told The Media Line that “Egypt is going through a period of instability because of radical Islamic groups operating within the country,” adding that the burqa creates a security problem as “many male and female terrorists use it to hide their identities or sneak into places.

Egypt has postponed a visit by Brazil's top diplomat, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said on Monday. Diplomatic sources said decision followed President-elect Jair Bolsonaro's vow to relocate the Brazilian Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

Foreign Minister Aloysio Nunes Ferreira had been set to fly to Cairo for a three-day visit from Nov. 8 to 11 that was to have included meetings with President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi and Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry.

But Cairo postponed the trip, citing problems with senior officials' agendas, the Brazilian Foreign Ministry said onday. Ministry insiders said no new date has been proposed, signaling Egypt's discontent with Bolsonaro's proposal.

Behind the scenes, Egyptian officials said Cairo was deeply displeased with Bolsonaro's promise, which breaks with longstanding Brazilian foreign policy in support of a two-state solution to the Middle East conflict.

The Egyptian Embassy in Brasilia was unavailable for comment.

Egyptian Cleric Nabil Al-Mursi: Wife Beating in Islam Is Meant to Discipline, Not to Punish or Humiliate pic.twitter.com/2uwhy9XU8J

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Monday laid the foundation stone for the kingdom’s first nuclear research reactor, state media said, as the kingdom seeks to diversify its energy mix.

The reactor was among seven projects launched by the prince during a visit to Riyadh’s King Abdulaziz City for Science and Technology, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

SPA offered no details on when the research or non-power reactor — typically used for research, development and education purposes — would be built and at what cost.

Saudi Arabia currently draws on oil and natural gas to meet its own fast-growing power demand and desalinate its water.

The world’s top crude exporter harbors plans to build 16 nuclear reactors over the next two decades for $80 billion as it seeks to diversify, despite concerns over nuclear proliferation in the Middle East.

Prince Mohammed said in March that if Iran develops a nuclear weapon, Riyadh will do so too.

Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif took to YouTube on Tuesday to dismiss US sanctions and Washington’s demands of change from Tehran as “absurd, unlawful and fundamentally flawed” and maintained the Trump administration would come to “regret this unwise move.”

“The US administration appears to believe that imposing draconian sanctions on Iran will bring about such pain to our nation that it will force us to submit to its will,” Zarif said in a video message, posted in English and Persian.

“We have weathered difficult times in the face of 40 years of American hostility relying solely on our own resources, and today we and our partners across the globe will ensure that our people are least affected by this indiscriminate assault,” he said.

Washington’s decision to scrap the multi-nation nuclear deal with Iran and reimpose sanctions — with the last tranche hitting on Monday — was “pushing it further into global isolation,” Zarif claimed.

When Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal in May of this year, he vowed that America would re-impose all the sanctions on Tehran that had been lifted by the pact championed by President Barack Obama.

That promise will be kept on November 5, as a deadline is reached for nations that need to cease importing Iranian goods or face serious financial penalties. It will impose sanctions on more than 700 businesses, government agencies, and individuals in Iran involved in oil, banking, shipping, shipbuilding, and insurance. That will tighten the noose that has been gradually choking the Iranian economy since Trump took office and began the process of dismantling his predecessor’s pact.

But there are two key elements of the announcement made by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that are troubling to those who have been applauding the president’s intentions to scrap a deal that enriched and empowered an enemy nation bent on hegemony in the Middle East, and failed to end the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapon. Far from being a sweeping ban on trade with Iran, the new sanctions keep open some significant loopholes.

One is that the administration has granted an exemption to eight unidentified countries, allowing them to continue to do business with Iran. One is believed to be India, a major trading partner of Tehran.

Also notably absent from the announcement was any mention of America’s determination to ensure that any nation or entity that conducts business with Iran will be cut off from the US-based Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication or SWIFT, which facilitates international transactions. If it had been included in the sanctions, that would essentially compel anyone interested in commerce with Iran to choose between money to be made with Iran or being able to do business in the United States, as well as any other entity that has interactions with US banks. That would have imposed a blanket of complete isolation on Iran.

The United States said Monday it was issuing waivers to allow the continuation of a nuclear deal with Iran, after declaring the agreement a disaster and slapping sweeping sanctions.

Hours after sanctions went into effect that ban most trade with Iran, the State Department said it was exempting projects set up through the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated under former president Barack Obama.

The international activities at Bushehr, Iran’s only nuclear power station, as well as the Fordow enrichment plant and the Arak heavy water reactor will be allowed “to continue under the strictest scrutiny to ensure transparency and maintain constraints on Iran,” the State Department said in a statement.

“This oversight enhances our ability to constrain Iran’s program and keep pressure on the regime while we pursue a new, stronger deal,” it said.

The State Department said the waivers were “temporary,” without specifying a timeframe, and “conditional on the cooperation of the various stakeholders.”

The 2015 agreement promised that world powers would assist Iran in developing civilian nuclear energy — the clerical regime’s stated goal for its atomic program.

The European Union has so far failed to find a country to host a special mechanism to trade with Iran and circumvent the newly reimposed U.S. sanctions that went into effect Monday, according to three EU diplomats, who said European governments fear being targeted by U.S. countermeasures.

The EU on Monday reissued its Nov. 2 statement, saying it was still setting up the so-called "special purpose vehicle," or SPV, which is designed to circumvent the sanctions.

The EU, which opposes the sanctions, had hoped to have the SPV ready by the time the sanctions came into force.

However, no EU country has so far volunteered to host the entity, the diplomats said. Several states have been asked by EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini to consider hosting the SPV headquarters, as the bloc tries to uphold the nuclear accord from which U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew in May.

While the European Commission declined to comment on Monday, European Economic Affairs Commissioner Pierre Moscovici said that "the European Union does not approve" of the reimposition of U.S. sanctions, which were lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Tuesday hit out at new sanctions on Iran imposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump, saying they were aimed at upsetting the global balance and against international law.

Washington on Monday renewed sanctions on the Islamic republic that aim to isolate the country’s banking sector and slash its oil exports. Turkey was one of eight countries exempted from the demand to stop buying Iranian oil.

“Because to us, they are aimed at upsetting the global balance,” he added. “They are against international law and diplomacy. We don’t want to live in an imperial world.”

Erdogan’s comments came after his Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu warned that isolating Iran was “dangerous.”

U.S. Embassy Jerusalem: The Iranian Regime Protects Itself

As the new round of sanctions against the Iranian regime goes into effect, regime officials are lying about the targets and consequences. The sanctions exempt humanitarian goods such as medicine and food, but the regime chooses to allow suffering among its people for political and financial purposes.

Chechen journalist Abdul Itslayev lived out the Second Chechen War in his native village. Against a backdrop of rocket attacks, murder and robbery, he tried to piece together what, in fact, was happening. RU

Illustration by Polina Zaslavskaya. All rights reserved.

Note from the editors: In August 1999, Russian forces started a brutal air campaign against Chechnya, killing and forcing tens of thousands to flee. Weeks later, after a series of apartment block bombings in Russia, President Putin declared the Chechen President and parliament illegitimate, and ordered a ground invasion.

Abdul Itslayev experienced this conflict in his home village of Goiskoe, located in the Urus-Martan district, south-west of Grozny, the capital. Here we publish an excerpt of his forthcoming memoirs.

The second war arrived in my native village of Goiskoye on Friday 10 September, 1999.

There were two rounds of aerial bombing, the first at 11.30, the second at 13.30. Their targets: a television relay station and a bridge spanning the Goitinka River. Residential houses were destroyed as well. Flying fragments injured Akho Bakayev and killed old Zelimkhan Ibiyev on the spot.

On a road not for from the bridge, a car carrying my neighbour and teacher Mansur Eskiev and his wife and children was riddled with holes. On the second morning they all set off for Georgia, and from there to Europe.

My own house didn’t escape unscathed. A dozen fragments struck the roof and another flew in through a window and lodged itself in the wall. I’d built my two-room khibara (hut) the year before using materials salvaged from the ruins of my parents’ house, destroyed during the first war. My hut may have resembled a barn more than anything else, but I delighted in it as if it were a palace. Having a roof over your head is any refugee’s dream. And that’s what I was, having spent over two years homeless.

Fifty metres from there, on the site of the destroyed house, stood my mother’s home. Built out of used brick, it boasted a slate roof and a basement – the only one in the whole area. Neighbours would take refuge there during air raids and shelling. My mother lived with my sister and four brothers. We built this house between June and December 1996, coming in to do so from Urus-Martan, where we spent over a year living in the partially constructed house of a friend after our village was destroyed.

The air strikes shredded the power lines. The pumping station ceased to function in the absence of energy. We got water from the river. After it rained, the water was a mixture of sand and clay - and the sediment would fill half a bucket.

No outsiders set foot in the village. This, everyone had decided, was Goiskoye’s fate: to be crushed by war for a second time

Our only connection with the outside world was an old transistor radio. Commenting on the movements of the army in Chechnya, General Manilov, representative of the Russian General Staff, would often mention Goiskoye. The strikes, he said, were being conducted against militant targets, even though there were absolutely nowhere to hide in the places he was talking about. Everything had been obliterated and bombed out back in 1996.

No outsiders set foot in the village. This, everyone had decided, was Goiskoye’s fate: to be crushed by war for a second time. Those who’d stayed put in the settlement numbered some four dozen people.

In early December, the shelling began to intensify. Military forces massed in the immediate vicinity of Urus-Martan.

They had missiles that detonated just above the ground, and they proved to be terrible weapons. Buildings ended up riddled top to bottom with fragments. Remaining in the village was no longer possible. Taking advantage of a window between raids, we relocated to my cousin’s place in neighbouring Alkhazurovo. Eight families holed up in the same house. Under a canopy in the yard was a dugout shelter for children and women.

The war, meanwhile, was following close on our heels. On the approach to Alkharzurovo, aerial strikes destroyed a Moskvich car and a motorbike being used by Salambek Soslambekov and Mumaid Gabzayev to transport some household things. Both Soslambekov and Gabzayev perished; Lom-Ali Ingayev sustained a knee injury.

The first sweeps

That morning, all Alkhazurovo was talking about a column of militants.

Leaving Urus-Martan, they’d retreated to the Argun River gorge via Martan-chu, Goy-chu and Alkhazurovo. There were no Russian planes in the air while the column was on the move. The artillery remained silent the whole night through. We were far from the “big road” and neither heard nor saw the militants. The next morning brought more news: Akhmed Zakayev had stopped here for the night but left in the small hours and said that he’d be relocating to Georgia.

In the evening, a car pulled up by the gates. I came out to the car and saw Adam Gatsayev. Around three years younger than me, he’d once been my student. The period between the two wars saw him working for the village administration. He had news, and a question to ask me:

“Military forces have entered Urus-Martan. Representatives from three villages – Alkhazurovo, Goy-chu and Goiskoye – have been summoned there by Shamanov. Delegations will be travelling over from the first two, but we’ve no one to send. Yunus did promise but he’s old and sick. Come tomorrow he might not even be able to get up – or he might change his mind. Maybe your brother could make the journey with me?”

“That’s no place for my brother to be. If Yunus can’t or won’t go, I’ll go myself.”

After returning from Urus-Martan, Adam waited for me on the outskirts of Alkhazurovo. I squeezed my body, heavy with fatigue, into the Zhiguli. Adam told me what had happened en route:

“People had gathered from all over the district. Shamanov welcomed them in person. All the military men were seriously well oiled and there was a whole sea of vodka waiting to be drunk. And all this in the t mosque the Wahhabists built in the central square. Shamanov made a speech. He said that Goiskoye had given him a massive headache during the first war as well, and that now his intelligence operatives had been taken out there.”

“What operatives? I’ve not heard anything about this…”

“I understand that a Russian reconnaissance group encountered a group of militants who’d retreated from Urus-Martan. They took out an armoured personnel carrier... Shamanov promised to be in Goiskoye tomorrow at noon. The sweep will follow, whereupon the population will be able to return. That’s what Shamanov said.”

Vladimir Shamanov was the general who destroyed Goyskoye. Back in 1996, he’d also summoned village elders for negotiations outside Alkhazurovo and set them conditions that couldn’t be fulfilled. Then he summoned the helicopters. “At least allow the women and children to be evacuated!” they implored him. “No!” he replied.

The column was crawling along. Yards and houses were searched from top to bottom, basements and attics included. Anything that aroused the slightest suspicion was subjected to a microscopic examination

We, Adam and I, decided: Shamanov wouldn’t be coming tomorrow, and the sweep would commence in the morning. We needed to arrive in the village before the soldiers.

On the way to Goiskoye, Adam told me more about the previous day’s meeting. The district now had leaders chosen or appointed by God knows who. We too had just a single card to play: if anyone asked, we’d say we were local officials. The village streets were absolutely deserted. Adam parked the Zhiguli in my mother’s yard. Shana spent five minutes telling us about the events of the previous night– but then armoured vehicles materialised at the far end of the street, along with soldiers inching along fences.

We headed towards them, keeping strictly to the middle of the road. No words, no unnecessary movements. Like tin soldiers. The APCs stopped. Someone dropped to one knee and took aim at us. The butts of automatic rifles were poked into our napes, backs and stomachs:

“Who’re you?”

“Local officials. Tell your commander we’re here.”

Someone spoke into a walkie-talkie behind us. We were nudged onward: “Go! The commander’s at the end of the column.” The column was a good kilometre long. Before we reached the end we were stopped another dozen times, prodded with automatics, showered with profanities and sniffed by Alsatians.

Finally, we came upon a middle-aged military man wearing an astrakhan hat.

“I’m the commander of the internal troop brigade,” he said. “What did you want?”

“This is the first sweep. You ought to warn people, calm them down. We were expecting you at noon.”

“You have half an hour. Tell everyone: don’t lay a finger on my guys and I won’t lay a finger on you. I give you my word.”

Who had stayed put in the village? On what streets? Did they have documents or didn’t they? We were two ordinary guys, just like everyone else, we enjoyed no authority. But there was no doubt about it: people would listen to us.

Illustration by Polina Zaslavskaya. All rights reserved.Half an hour later we were back at the end of column. The colonel addressed us brusquely:

“Come with me. You’ll leave once the sweep is over. Yesterday,” he added, “they finished their inspection of Urus-Martan. 27 residents in the whole town. Would you believe it!”

The column was crawling along. Yards and houses were searched from top to bottom, basements and attics included. Anything that aroused the slightest suspicion was subjected to a microscopic examination. Reports and orders sounded over the walkie-talkie. Trailing two steps behind the officer, we heard someone exclaim in surprise: “Dirt-poor village, this is!”

The colonel glanced over at us: had we made out these words?

“Two years ago all this was just ruins,” said Adam. “At least there’s something here now.”

Another report over the radio:

“We’re here in the southern zone, we’ve just stopped a Moskvich with three people inside and a bloody axe and knives under the seat. We’ve roughed them up a bit…”

I guessed who “they” were:

“They’re from Urus-Martan, butcher’s sons. They’ve holed up at their uncle’s, relocated to Alkhazurovo together with us. Order them not to be beaten.”

“Don’t touch them until I arrive,” ordered the colonel.

All three were stood by the flung-open doors of the Moskvich, muddied, bruised, one of them with blood on his face. Recognising me, they addressed me by name, and I by theirs.

“Let them go on their way,” said the commander.

Illustration by Polina Zaslavskaya. All rights reserved.This was the first and last sweep to have involved next to no bloodshed. All the subsequent ones – and, in the first year of the counter-terrorism operation, they were conducted at least two or three times monthly – featured arrests, beatings, zindans (underground prisons), fingerprinting, widespread looting.

The second sweep followed a different playbook. The village was blocked off to the world before sunrise: no exit, no entry. The two generals in charge of the special op – Yakov Nedobitko and Viktor Medveditskov – stationed themselves on the village’s southern outskirts, near a roadblock. Close by was the filtropunkt (“filtration point”) to which all male residents aged 12 to 65 were being herded. Later, an old quarry in the north-eastern outskirts was transformed into a filtropunkt (and fingerprinting facility) as well.

If the first sweep didn’t fray people’s nerves, all restraints were now cast aside: rudeness, boorishness, high-handedness... Complaints from all sides: “They confiscated this, took away that, stole this, made off with that.”

Even my hut was picked clean. The items taken included old notebooks, a camera, a Dictaphone, a couple of t-shirts, and a honey harvesting tent. The hives themselves weren’t touched.

We now faced our first “official” ransom demand: one ram.

A relative fleeing Chechnya had left a Mercedes in Uvais Kayev’s yard. As for the documentation and keys, he either took them with him or left them in someone’s keeping. Whose? This remained a mystery. Some military men smashed one of the windows, opened the door, combed the interior of the car. The trunk wouldn’t open, not even with the help of a crowbar. So the officer laid down a condition: “Either you cough up a ram or the car gets towed!”

“The old master of the house has no sheep.”

“There’s sheep in the village. He can buy one.”

Long story short: a ram took a ride in the last car involved in the special operation.

Death squads come to Urus-Martan

The “federals” reported the coordinates of the mass grave site in the old quarry. Close by stood the 245th Motorised Rifle Regiment (notorious for its atrocities) and a regiment under the command of Colonel Yuri Budanov. Even before his arrest and trial, Budanov was, how to put it, a familiar face to everyone. Everyone knew about his conflict with Khavazhi Dzhambulatov, the administration chief of the village of Tangi-chu. The colonel fought him and was beaten on more than one occasion.

Flash-forward to a courtroom in Rostov-on-Don in 2003. Budanov glanced at the next witness, Dzhambulatov, and asked, his voice full of anxiety: “How did you get here?”

“You and I are both here on your account…”

But this was still yet to come. Back in the present, people were angry after the bodies of 69 people had been uncovered, near Urus-Martan at the start of 2000. The anger and indignation could lead pretty much anywhere, and so the “federals” refused to honour their promise – to show people another three burial pits.

Most of the corpses in the mass grave had been laid out in a row, face up, and covered with tarpaulin and earth. Bodies in another mass grave discovered north-east of the village of Novye Varandy, on the banks of the Argun, had been “committed to the ground” in identical fashion. This area was within the responsibility zone of regiments stationed outside Tangi-chu. Later, corpses of residents detained in villages on the banks of the Argun were found scattered in Tangi-chu cemetery.

In the evenings, the curfew forced the town’s denizens into their homes. The streets became the domain of forces what were soon dubbed “death squads” by local residents

People returned to Urus-Martan; public transport started working again, as did the market. In the afternoons, the centre was completely full. But the town was buzzing like a hive about to disgorge a swarm of bees. Not a day passed without someone being killed or kidnapped...

In the evenings, the curfew forced the town’s denizens into their homes. The streets became the domain of forces what were soon dubbed “death squads” by local residents. They freely bypassed roadblocks and initially didn’t even cover up the side numbers of armoured personnel carriers and infantry fighting vehicles or the registration marks of UAZs and Zhigulis.

When the victim count rose into the hundreds, the town authorities were finally able to secure the consent of the military commandant’s office to nightly patrols by (unarmed) local residents. These patrols took control of key intersections and streets, documenting and suppressing any unauthorised movements. The murders and kidnappings stopped. A week later, however, the patrol parties formed by the locals began to come under fire. They ought to have been reinforced, made capable of striking back. The military, however, had decided otherwise – and banned the townspeople from going on patrol…

The death squads once again became the sovereign masters of Urus-Martan after dark. Among their victims were two imams from the congregational mosque (Umar Idrisov and Hasmagomed Umalatov), officials from local government agencies and security services, old people and young people.

The majority of the people who were kidnapped were unaccounted for. Some were found killed, tortured to death. Their remains were most often discovered in orchards outside Urus-Martan which had gone wild in the course of two wars.

There were two kidnappings in Goiskoye. Abducted directly from his house, Movldi Umayev struggled free and fled… only to be struck down by machine-gun fire. Aindi Dudurkayev, too, was dragged from his home at night by unknown individuals. Is he still alive? What fate befell him after his abduction, and where did it befall him? There’s no answer.

Without light or kerosene

A different situation was developing in neighbouring Goy-chu. There was a roadblock manned by Rybinsk OMON personnel on the main road to the north of the village. A motorised rifle regiment was stationed in the south, at the foot of the mountains. Meanwhile, the authorities were also putting the heat on the populace: “Your sympathies are with militants and you’re helping them out.” How exactly they were doing so remained unclear. Forget about a human slipping through the regiment’s lines – a woodland creature hadn’t a hope in hell of doing it.

In late February-early March, however, the bulwark was found to have a breach through which a small group of militants had made their way into the village. The group surrendered, and the military summoned the village residents to a meeting. The generals threatened to wipe the settlement from the face of the earth. But the village’s military commandant – a captain everyone knew (Volodya) – asked the generals not to call in the planes: “I have to live with these people, I have to work with them…”

A day or two later, people started talking about a second group of militants who’d managed to make it through the cordons. The voices of those who’d suddenly discovered a conspiracy between the military and the militants now began to make themselves heard. Quiet at first, these voices grew ever louder; the military had allegedly provided a corridor for the militants, and the latter, a detachment led by Arbi Barayev, advanced through it, proceeding via Goy-chu and Goiskoye. It immediately turned out that this occurred on a day when Goiskoye was subjected to yet another sweep. Having mentally reviewed its entire course, we suddenly discovered that a single empty farmstead had remained “unswept” in the village.

We drove down there and took a look. Footsteps from the gate led not to the house but to a cellar off to the side of it. The floor was thick with dirt left there by dozens of pairs of shoes. Who’d been hanging about here for so long – the “Barayevites” or the “sweepers”?

Illustration by Polina Zaslavskaya. All rights reserved.There was still no light, and kerosene for lamps wasn’t available. Your eyes quickly get tired in the candlelight. You could find yourself some transistor radio batteries at the Urus-Martan market and spend whole nights listening to news broadcasts on various frequencies. It was as though broadcasts out of Chechnya and about Chechnya weren’t about us at all. You sometimes heard something akin to the truth from Radio Svoboda and other foreign “voices”.

As for the reports on the new radio station Chechnya Svobodnaya (Free Chechnya), they were just pure fiction. Listening to them, you’d have thought we Chechens had one foot in a bright future and another in veritable ocean of bliss. According to Chechnya Svobodnaya, it was only yesterday that our children did no studying and had only ever held machine guns in their hands; and as for today, well…

My daughter entered Year 1 in September 1998. In September 1999, she ran home from school in tears as bombs and rockets rained down on us. Her school was housed in a prefabricated panel house allocated for that purpose by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees following the destruction of Goiskoye – and, specifically, the school – in the spring of 1996. Windows covered with polyethylene film. No light (nor would there be for another ten months). No heat (no gas, no wood, no coal). Roadside orchards and strips of forest cut down for firewood. Desks, tables, chairs all ramshackle. Teachers were mostly in Ingushetia, as refugees. Some were already in Europe...

Meanwhile, Russia’s presidential elections were scheduled for 26 March 2000. The bullet-riddled school was to be used as a polling station serving the settlements of Goiskoye and Michurina, with voter lists already being compiled.

How to make all of this out from Moscow, to say nothing of the provinces?

Massacre in Goy-chu

Daybreak brought the sounds of combat from Goy-chu.

The first news came a couple of hours later: something odd was happening, people were leaving their houses…

You could see from the Y-junction, from the roadblock that soldiers had formed a semi-circle around those people who’d managed to escape. According to two women who’d forced their way through the semi-circle, residents were cajoled and threatened back into their homes.

Towards evening, the denizens of Goy-chu had been convinced that the group of militants who had forced their way into the village were now neutralised and the village itself swept clean. No need to worry: federal forces were in control of the situation. The road to the village was completely blocked off. Neither Adam nor myself – nor, indeed, anyone desperate to know if their relatives were still alive – were allowed access to the settlement.

The din of the approaching battle floated in from Goy-chu throughout the night. Now, with the coming of morning, the village was being pounded by aerial and artillery strikes. Columns of military equipment were advancing through Goiskoye on their way to Goy-chu. At the crossroads between Alkhazurovo and Goy-chu, the carnage taking place in the latter was clearly visible: shells and rockets were tearing houses to shreds and sending plumes of smoke and fire into the sky.

Half a kilometre from the intersection, on the outskirts of the village, a vast crowd of men, women and children had amassed in a field. They had been encircled, and no one was allowed to leave the encirclement or to approach it. Here, at the fork in the road, the “operation’s” HQ had been set up in the military-occupied house of Visayev. Communicating through “intermediary” officers, residents of neighbouring settlements attempted to persuade the generals to release women and children from the encirclement. The generals, though, had other ideas…

The slaughter went on for over two weeks. Abating at night, the intensity of the battles would reach a peak by noon

Towards lunchtime, we learned the names of dozens of Goy-chu residents who’d failed to flee the village before the aerial and artillery strikes began. Then, after lunch, information filtered through that there was neither food nor warm clothing within the encirclement. People started putting together food packages in Goiskoye and Alkhazurovo and bread was brought over from Urus-Martan.

In a field next to the roadblock stood a battery of regimental mortars as well as Buratino rocket launchers. They were firing over the heads of the thousands of Goy-chu residents taken hostage by the military. These people’s houses, all their possessions, the village itself – it was being destroyed before their very eyes.

The slaughter went on for over two weeks. Abating at night, the intensity of the battles would reach a peak by noon. Having forced their way into the village from the south via the Goitinka River gorge, the militants reached the northern outskirts almost immediately. They were negotiated with, and then, after a turning point in the situation, methodically finished off – alongside local residents who hadn’t managed to flee the village in time.

Corpses... There were many of them. So many, in fact, that even six months, even a year later they wouldn’t let me sleep. Images of wounds, faces, clothing kept flickering before my eyes… They were brought in, freshly searched, either by military personnel conducting a post-battle sweep or else by the funeral team of the Ministry of Emergency Situations. Clothes unbuttoned, pockets turned out, often shoeless...

Each corpse was photographed and filmed. Dress, appearance, approximate age, possessions – all this was recorded. Their official papers rarely turned up, and these records were supposed to help identify them. And so it frequently proved: over half of the individuals committed nameless to the ground went on to acquire names. Some were identified immediately, and relatives would either take away the corpse or bury it here, alongside the others.

It wasn’t only Chechens from settlements near and far who were searching for “their own” among the dead. One day a Russian general arrived:

“My intelligence operatives never left this village. I was informed that the corpses of some non-Muslims with wire-bound hands were brought here yesterday...”

“There were no such corpses here.”

“I’d like my guys to take a look at yesterday’s corpses.”

They left their weapons in the vehicle, inspected a long row of dead bodies in the cemetery – and recognised not a single one. Nor would it have been easy to do so: identifying familiar features on mutilated bodies crushed by rubble or lying for weeks under the open sky isn’t a straightforward matter. Some, the charred ones, were completely unidentifiable. A bloody mess where the face should be. Noses and ears cut off, throats slashed. There wasn’t a single elderly face.

While this year's midterms elections are likely to have record-high turnout, 6 million Americans were unable to vote this year because of a previous felony conviction.

In Florida, which has one of the strictest laws in the country, one in 10 voting-age adults and almost one in four African-American adults are barred from voting for life because of a previous felony conviction — for now.

A ballot referendum in Florida this year, Amendment 4, would add an amendment to Florida's constitution automatically restoring voting and civil rights to people convicted of most felonies after the completion of their sentences.

Voters passed the amendment, restoring voting rights to the state's 1.5 million citizens with felony convictions.

While most of those states automatically restore the civil rights of felons upon their release from prison or after completion of parole or probation, some permanently disenfranchise those convicted of serious crimes (like Nevada and Arizona) or election-related offenses (like in Missouri).

Iowa and Kentucky are other states that still disenfranchise felons for life. Not only do those people permanently lose their right to vote, but also the right to serve on a jury of their peers, run for office, own a firearm, or obtain a professional license — unless they receive clemency from the governor.

Because the clemency process is entirely up to the executive branch and not the legislature, procedures in Florida had varied drastically depending on who the governor was. Republican Gov. Jeb Bush granted clemency to about one-fifth of the 385,522 applicants for clemency from 1997 to 2007.

When Democratic Gov. Charlie Crist took office in 2007, he overhauled the clemency system, automatically restoring voting rights to non-violent offenders upon the completion of their sentences and putting violent ones into a review process. When Crist was Governor from 2007 to 2011, 150,000 people with felony convictions regained their civil rights.

But when Republican Gov. Rick Scott came into power, he made the rules for receiving clemency stricter than ever before, and only granted clemency to 3,000 applicants in eight years, leading the Florida chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union to estimate that the current backlog of clemency applications will take decades to clear up.

After the waiting period, the application, and sometimes a hearing, a person could be denied restoration with no justification, and had to wait another two years before applying again. A federal judge recently ruled that the current system of clemency under Scott was unconstitutional, and the state had to reform it to be less arbitrary and set out clearer criteria for receiving clemency.

But this Election Day, voters decided that all of that should change.

Floridians who could vote on Tuesday passed the ballot referendum Amendment 4 — enacting a state constitutional amendment automatically restoring voting rights to felons, except those convicted of murder and felony sex crimes, after completion of their sentences.

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While “The Rocket” Brandon Sheppard did what he could to earn his first championship this weekend, after wracking up his 13th win on Friday night/Saturday afternoon, a third-place finish for Mike Marlar would catapult the points leader into a knock down drag out fight for the 2018 World of Outlaws Craftsman Late Model Series championship on Saturday night.

Based on the sweeping, internationally best-selling novel, A Thousand Splendid Suns is the tale of the unlikely connection that blossoms between two Afghan women in war-torn Kabul. As rockets shriek down from the heavens, the friendship of Laila and Mariam develops into an iron-bound rapport, forged by their defiance of a life of senseless tyranny. Secrets, lies, and pacts are made in this harrowing yet ultimately beautiful piece about the true cost of sacrifice.

Chron.comHouston society turned out over the past few weekends with checkbooks in hand to raise funds for a variety of local causes. Rockets owner and billionaire entrepreneur Tillman and Paige Fertitta opened their home Saturday, Nov. 3, for the 11th annual … …read more Source:: Houston News From Google News

I too was impressed by his academic credentials and his attempt to quantify crowd behavior. His analyses search for patterns of impending failure such as rocket motor vibrations and earthquakes. The formula he put forth struck me as curve fitting through the rectospectoscope, but it sure was pretty. In the end, human herd behavior is much less consistent than say frequencies of vibrating metal about to shatter given a certain temperature and so on. It would be great to have such a holy grail indicator, but so much depends on the experiential history of people with enough oomph to move the market and the degree to which contagion has become part of the zeitgeist. It's probably more of a Keynesian beauty contest than science.

Press Release – New Zealand Society of Anaesthetists Wed 7 November 2018 The overuse of prescription opioid medications overseas and skyrocketing opioid addiction that has followed is one of the greatest public health crises of our time and New Zealand needs urgent action to ensure we avert a similar disaster, says Dr Mike Foss, a […]

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EL PASO, Texas ― Democrat Beto O’Rourke’s bid for Senate seat in a reliably red state ended in defeat on Tuesday, dashing the hopes of progressives in Texas and beyond who had yearned for a Congress free of Republican Ted Cruz.

Despite a parade of celebratory national media coverage and a whopping $70 million donation haul ― raised without the aid of big donors or corporate political action committees ― polls had consistently shown the odds were against O’Rourke’s chances of derailing Cruz’s re-election. O’Rourke, 46, narrowed the gap in several surveys in the campaign’s waning days, but never closed it.

Instead, Republicans continue to dominate the major political offices in a state whose changing demographics have made it majority-minority but whose electorate retains a conservative tilt. The GOP hasn’t lost a statewide election since 1994.

“I am as inspired, as hopeful, as I have ever been in my life, and tonight’s loss does nothing to diminish the way that I feel about Texas or this country,” O’Rourke told his supporters in El Paso after conceding.

“We’re not going to define ourselves by who or what we’re against or afraid of, or scared of,” he added.

“The expectations of dramatic, huge partisan shifts are just unrealistic,” University of Texas at Austin political scientist James Henson said. “It’s not going to happen.”

O’Rourke’s campaign was significant not just for the amount of attention it grabbed, but because it attracted any national interest at all.

Democrats seeking statewide office in Texas are used to losing by margins of 20 percentage points or more ― a trend that has made prominent party members unlikely to jump into races they have little confidence in winning. This year, several of the best-known liberal names in the state ― including Julian Castro, who is scouting a run for the presidency ― passed on runs for the Senate seat or the governor’s office.

But given the enthusiasm aroused by O’Rourke, a House member from El Paso, his quixotic campaign is likely to shake up Texas politics in the years to come. His high-profile battle with Cruz should improve Democratic prospects for recruiting better candidates and cause party leaders to view the state as more competitive.

“It will embolden people,” said Jose Parra, a Democratic strategist who worked as an adviser to former U.S. Sen. Harry Reid. “There is a future as a Democrat in Texas.”

Perhaps more importantly, O’Rourke gave beleaguered Texas Democrats a new template by casting aside the traditional strategy of focusing turnout efforts on voters in the state’s four largest urban areas, which skew blue. Instead, O’Rourke anchored his aggressive ground game on his commitment to visit each of the state’s 254 counties. As he traveled he focused on mobilizing Hispanic voters across the neglected border region while simultaneously pleading his case to independents and conservatives in red counties that in the past voted overwhelmingly for Republicans, including Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race.

“For the longest time, Texas has been written off as a lost cause,” Veronica Escobar, a Democrat who was elected to take over O’Rourke’s House seat on Tuesday, told HuffPost. “There are huge groups of people who have felt left out of the process. Unless you talk to them, they’re never coming back. And I mean literally talk to them. That’s what Beto has done.”

The 47-year-old Cruz, meanwhile, avoided what would have been a crushing blow for a politician who had rocketed to the national stage and now remains primed to be a leading figure in the GOP.

After winning his Senate seat in 2012, Cruz quickly emerged as a strong ― often strident ― voice of the Tea Party conservatism that was remaking the GOP and pushing it further to the right. In 2013 alone, he helped scuttle a bipartisan push for the comprehensive reform of immigration policy reform and played a key role in a 16-day government shutdown.

Never shy about his ambition, he quickly became a major contender in the crowded race for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. He won several caucuses and primaries and emerged as the last candidate standing against Trump.

There appeared to be no love lost between the two men as they battled in the GOP race ― the Texan called Trump a “pathological liar,” while the New York businessman took to calling his foe “Lyin’ Ted Cruz.” But after Trump won the White House, Cruz emerged as a reliable administration supporter and a defender of the president’s combative style.

Trump returned the favor by heartily endorsing Cruz and traveling to Texas late last month to headline a huge rally for the senator and, in typical fashion, bash O’Rourke.

The Democrat, for his part, eschewed a political climate marked by negativity and ran a relentlessly upbeat campaign. O’Rourke declined to attack Cruz until their second debate in October. Instead, he trumpeted bipartisanship while staking out positions on several issues that placed him within the Democratic Party’s progressive wing.

He backed an incremental approach toward universal health care, tougher antitrust laws and a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. As part of a comprehensive critique urging reform of the criminal justice system, he called for the legalization of marijuana and the erasure of weed possession convictions.

Democrats have to get up the morning after this election, no matter how depressed they are, and really understand that one of the things that really helped them this cycle is that they attracted a really strong candidate at the top of the ticket and some really strong candidates at the congressional level, and think about immediately building on that.
James Henson, political scientist at the University of Texas at Austin.

The highly publicized and covered contest between Cruz and O’Rourke had at least one dramatic effect ― spurring a significant expansion in the number of Texans on the voting rolls. In recent years, the state had added an average of 100,000 new voters to the rolls. But between the ’16 presidential election and the close of registration this year, about 700,000 Texans registered to cast ballots.

Along with motivating new voters, the O’Rourke campaign amassed an army of volunteers to carry out pop up block walks and staff a turnout operation that included more than 700 field offices. In a state where Democrats have struggled to build infrastructure to boost lagging turnout, particularly among Hispanics, that trend leaves some operatives feeling optimistic about the future.

“This is a long-term game,” said Oscar Silva, director of the political action committee Battleground Texas, which aims to flip the state to blue by raising turnout. “It’s so exciting that it’s happening faster than any of us imagined.”

And even in defeat, O’Rourke walks away a rising star in his party who already has been mentioned as a potential presidential contender.

But none of the strides for Texas Democrats made possible by O’Rourke’s campaign changes the reality that the state remains under firm conservative control.

“Democrats have to get up the morning after this election, no matter how depressed they are, and really understand that one of the things that really helped them this cycle is that they attracted a really strong candidate at the top of the ticket and some really strong candidates at the congressional level, and think about immediately building on that,” said Henson, the University of Texas political scientist. “2020 is going to be here before you know it.”

"Poisha porachhe (burning money)," my grandfather would quip, as we watched fireworks shoot up the terraces circling our crumbling, mossy ground-floor house in south Kolkata, sandwiched between two shiny new high-rises. The rockets that burst into a cloud of glowing green stars or the string of blinking red lights that'd hover above our heads before burning out had never figured in the ration of a middle-class Bengali household.

Unlike the celebrations around Durga Puja, which brought with it a sense of homogeneity as it unfurled through long queues of fretting, sweating people in front of pandals and mini crowds of again, fretting, sweating people in front of chicken roll and puchka shops, the festivities of Kali Puja and Diwali were distinctly less homogenous in nature. Ask any average Bengali girl in Kolkata—she'd have spent half her Diwalis as a teenager convincing her mother that an apocalypse involving drunken men dancing to Suniel Shetty hits wasn't sweeping across the city's streets. Or, if you were fretful Bengalis like us, your grandparent would have listed the number of kilos of hilsa that could be bought at the price of those fancy crackers. My grandmother, and then my mother, could win the argument with, "Now count the kilos of mutton kosha you can get with the price of two of those?"

If you were fretful Bengalis like us, your grandparent would have listed the number of kilos of hilsa that could be bought at the price of those fancy crackers.

Nevertheless, we'd find ways to negotiate the distinctly different streams of festivities the city embraced and the various biases that came with it. My personal favourite was queueing up at a sweet shop that sold mostly north Indian sweets and demanding 5 pieces of kaju katli as the shopkeeper tried to explain they only sold in kilos. "Then give us 100 grams," my brother and I insisted, till the poor man gave in. Of course, my mother would still maintain she could buy gold at the price of those kaju katlis. There'd still be gaping differences in the discourse. For example, a number of middle-class Bengali parents would narrate stories of the Kali Pujo organised in crematoriums—known as Shamshan Kali—by doms, with a mix of fear and fascination, firmly other-ing a celebration otherwise ceremonially similar to the ones in their own neighbourhoods. I remember an uncle shaking his head and commenting how the Pujo in the crematorium was much like the lives of the doms who made a living by helping burn corpses and cleaning up after—'very scary', he said. However, there was always a steady stream of visitors decked up in their festival finery to visit the 'shamshan Kali', I had noticed later while crossing a south Kolkata crematorium.

A number of middle-class Bengali parents would narrate stories of the Kali Pujo organised in crematoriums—known as Shamshan Kali—by doms, with a mix of fear and fascination, firmly other-ing a celebration otherwise ceremonially similar to the ones in their own neighbourhoods.

It is, perhaps then, only mildly surprising that some sort of a Kali Puja versus Diwali comparison has reared its head on social media. One Twitter user commented 'Bengalis don't celebrate Diwali' and pointed out that mutton is widely consumed on Kali Pujo. While that could be the personal experience of the Twitter user and many others like her, it is not true that all Bengalis have not traditionally embraced Diwali in parts. For example, the formalised Bengali greetings vocabulary around the festivities included both the words 'Shubho Deepaboli' and 'Shyama Puja'. In fact, in my social circles, we followed the religious rituals of the Kali Pujo, consumed the barfis and laddoos typical to north Indian Diwali traditions and usually wished each other 'Happy Diwali'. The paraphernalia around the festival—billboards, television ads, print ads and greetings cards—used a mix of both words as well.

However, months before a general election whose grounds have been prepared by political parties over religious tolerance, or lack of it, people have begun to pick apart the threads from the tangled web of celebrations that Kolkata has traditionally embraced. Of course, in response to the original tweet, the Hindutva right-wing handles turned out in hordes to abuse and chastise the the woman who wrote it. And very soon, Twitter dived into a now-familiar 'I do religion better than you' battle. Last year, several Hindu right-wing handles tried to school Bengalis on the 'right' way to worship Durga—over a newspaper ad—and were immediately smacked down.

However, months before a general election, whose grounds have been prepared by political parties over religious tolerance, or lack of it, people have begun to pick apart the threads from the tangled web of celebrations that Kolkata has traditionally embraced.

The political rhetoric around the Durga Puja this year was clearly a response to the episodes of violence that West Bengal witnessed earlier this year. Three people were killed in March after clashes over Ram Navami, a first around that particular religious festival in the state. With BJP planning rath yatras at sites of Hindu pilgrimages—like Tarapith and Gangasagar— and making it clear they will go the 'champions of Hindutva' route in Bengal, the Trinamool Congress have also taken to performing religion with more gusto. While the TMC government put up giant billboards across the state with the following catchline—'religion is mine, religion is yours but festivals are for everyone'—they also gave Rs 10,000 to every Durga Puja organiser, costing the state exchequer Rs 28 crore. Before this year, the political class had never felt the need to emphasize that inclusive nature of the Durga Puja festivities at least. In 2013, the TMC government had tried to pay imams a monthly allowance, a move that was challenged by a BJP leader and also rejected by the Calcutta High Court.

Before this year, the political class had never felt the need to emphasize that inclusive nature of the Durga Puja festivities at least.

Dyutiman Banerjee, a lawyer who had moved a petition on behalf of one Sourav Gupta against the Durga Puja sop, said that giving Puja organisers Rs 10,000 was against the provisions of the Constitution. However, their petition was dismissed by the Supreme Court. Banerjee added that with the polls nearing and political parties going all out to milk religion for votes, the nature of festivities which thrived on the feeling of community in West Bengal have suffered. "Not only in Bengal, but I think throughout India because of the polls and the current anti-secular situation. Of course, in Bengal, previously nobody celebrated Ram Navami, but now it's turning out to be a big festival where the political parties are marching down the streets with swords," he added.

Anandabazar Patrika reports that this year, in districts close to the Bengal-Assam border, Kali Puja inauguration invites for BJP leaders have sharply declined. Following the NRC chaos in Assam, several Puja organisers have decided to not invite BJP leaders as they fear it would spark a controversy and rile religious sentiments.

A friend commented in jest on a Facebook status I posted referring to Diwali, "Shouldn't you say Kali Pujo instead of Diwali?"

As an election where religion is a weapon of choice looms ahead, festivals have become more 'us' and 'them' than ever before.

Scientists of the future huddle around a computer, waiting for an HD live stream of the incoming asteroid. As the probe that will provide the crucial communication slowly moves into view of the asteroid, they know that every second counts. In a surprising move, they tune their receivers not to radio frequencies, like we do today, but to a much higher frequency—somewhere in the near-infrared. But they think nothing of it—infrared and visible light allows for a much better transmission of data, and all of the leading satellite producers have switched over by now. But at the last minute, a cloud rolls in above the station, scattering the message from the relay satellite in all directions and cutting off the receiver.

That’s where the work of Dr. Jean-Pierre Wolf comes in.

He’s a professor at the Université de Genève in Switzerland and his research could be the missing link that makes this kind of high-speed communication with satellites possible. He’s been working for years on a specialized laser that stations can aim at the sky to dispel any water droplets in the air—effectively boring a hole through the cloud and permitting the satellite’s signal to pass through.

A visualization of the laser that bores through clouds.Image Credit: UNIGE, Xavier Ravinet

But let’s take a step back. Today, all communication with satellites is done using radio frequency electromagnetic waves, largely because they're stable over large distances and aren’t prone to scattering in Earth’s atmosphere. However, they sprawl out as they travel down to Earth and tend to cover a large area by the time they reach land, requiring that nearby satellites use frequency bands that don’t overlap—otherwise any listener on the ground would receive an unintelligible mixture of information coming from a variety of sources. Because of this, a patchwork of national and international organizations relegate so-called “frequency bands” (a narrow range of frequencies) to various agencies for a fee. However, in our increasingly connected world, unused frequency bands are harder and harder to come by—which means the price has skyrocketed.

Because of these constraints, a number of researchers are turning to a different mode of communication: near-infrared and optical frequencies beamed down from space using powerful lasers. While laser beams are still composed of electromagnetic waves, the waves oscillate thousands of times faster than radio, carrying up to 10,000 times the amount of data. The pinpoint accuracy of a laser beam also allows for more direct communication without the risk of a third party intercepting messages simply by tuning in to a fortuitous frequency. Instead, the laser ensures what Wolf calls “end-to-end connection”: one end comes from the satellite and the other end lands on a single receiver, with a strongly reduced possibility of leakage. In addition, at higher frequencies the quantum nature of the photons present in the electromagnetic wave becomes more apparent, making extra security features like quantum cryptography possible. Oh, and lasers use much less power than radio sources.

In short, there are plenty of reasons to move away from radio communications.

Unlike radio waves, the higher frequency lasers are easily scattered by the water droplets that make up clouds or fog, rendering any satellites that use them mute the moment a storm hits. One popular solution to this problem has been to simply build more receiving stations and hope that at least one will see clear skies at any given time, but this is every bit as costly and inconvenient as it sounds. Fortunately, in light of Wolf’s recent publication, it may be unnecessary.

Believe it or not, Wolf isn’t the first to tackle the project of whisking clouds away with lasers. In the 1970s and 1980s the Soviet Union and U.S. military experimented with using high-intensity carbon dioxide lasers to locally boil away the water contained in clouds to improve troop visibility on the battlefield. Although they did succeed in clearing a hole roughly 100 m long, the electricity draw was eventually determined to be prohibitive.

An image from the '80s depicting a fifteen meter long haze caused by a carbon dioxide laser. Image Credit: Zuev A A, Zemlyanov Yu, Kopytin D and Kuzikovskii A V 1985 High Power Laser Radiation in Atmospheric Aerosols (Dordrecht: VE Reidel Publ.)

Instead, Wolf decided to take a different approach that would be more energy efficient using pulsed lasers. This kind of laser has a rapidly oscillating power, rather than a constant one; as it turns out, when the peak power—the power delivered when the pulse is at its strongest—is sufficiently high, a special property emerges that isn’t seen in other lasers.

First, the power is not uniformly concentrated across the tiny width of the laser beam; instead it is highest at the center of the beam and tapers off towards the edges. The variation in electromagnetic radiation actually affects the index of refraction (a measure of how much light is bent) of the surrounding air, effectively turning the air itself into a lens—the technical term for this phenomenon is a Kerr lens. This “lens” bends the beams in towards itself, narrowing its breadth and refocusing it until it is strong enough to rip electrons from the surrounding atoms in a process called ionization.

At this point the beam diverges again, and the process repeats itself faster and faster until eventually the laser beam holds a stable width, at which point it is referred to as a “filament”. The lone electrons that were stripped off of their atoms don’t remain that way for long though; they quickly recombine with the positively-charged ions, releasing energy in the form of a shock wave and a crackling noise. This is where the magic happens: the shock waves pushes water droplets out of the way, opening a channel roughly a centimeter in diameter. But that’s enough to allow the passage of a laser transmitting all the information it contains. (Eventually, we will need to get to approximately 10 cm to receive information from a satellite.)

An illustration of the filamentation process. To the upper left, the diagram shows how the index of refraction (n) varies with distance, creating a "lens" and causing the beam to converge. To the upper right, the ionization changes the index of refraction once more, this time causing the beam to diverge. As the process repeats itself over and over, the laser beam self-stabilizes and creates a laser filament (lower diagram).Image Credit: Jean-Pierre Wolf.

Since the laser is merely displacing the water droplets rather than boiling them off like the military tried to do, the power draw comes out to a much more reasonable 100 watts. Even so, this laser is still incredibly powerful. When asked about safety concerns, Wolf nods. Since the cleaning beams are sent up to the satellite and not down to the earth, there isn’t a big risk associated with them—after all, the energy (and the danger) of a laser is concentrated inside the beam. He does acknowledge that the only (manmade) objects that might pass through the beam—aircraft—will need to be diverted. “But there are already a number of no-fly zones,” he points out. We would just need to be strategic about where we build receiving stations; the middle of a flight corridor might be out of the question. But even if a plane did fly through the beam, it wouldn’t be at risk unless it were flying sideways or upside down. “But if that is the case, you have other problems,” he chuckles.

Wolf envisions equipping receiving facilities with one of these self-stabilizing lasers, possibly by coupling them to the focusing lasers that are already required to get a satellite’s attention. Then, any time intense humidity threatens the quality of communication the stations will be ready to blast it out of the way.

So far, Wolf has demonstrated his laser’s effectiveness in a laboratory setting using an artificial cloud only 50 cm deep, but with 10,000 the water concentration of a typical cloud. He says he is currently in close contact with large aerospace consortia and hopes to test the technology out on a real cloud soon. If that goes well—as he believes it will—he hopes to see a global rollout by 2025.If that’s the case, it might not actually be long before those scientists of the future become the scientists of the present...let’s just hope there’s no asteroid.

Maryland landed its first commitment since September on Tuesday when wide receiver Dino Tomlin announced his commitment to the Terrapins. Tomlin is a three-star wide receiver and the son of Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin. The 6-foot, 163-pound recruit out of Shady Side Academy in Pittsburgh also has ties to the Maryland program as his […]

Chron.comHouston society turned out over the past few weekends with checkbooks in hand to raise funds for a variety of local causes. Rockets owner and billionaire entrepreneur Tillman and Paige Fertitta opened their home Saturday, Nov. 3, for the 11th annual … …read more Source:: Houston News From Google News

Elon Musk’s Rocket X Tesla Has Just Passed Mars You may recall that earlier this year Elon Musk undertook one of the most bizarre missions ever. Utilising his SpaceX program, he successfully launched a Tesla Roadster into space. It was amazing to watch and certainly something more of a publicity stunt rather than any scientific […]

Above all else, Skyrocket is a small team of individuals who care deeply about their jobs, and the impact they can have on the world - and we look for that...From Skyrocket Digital - Thu, 30 Aug 2018 08:35:20 GMT - View all Vancouver, BC jobs

In the system of national defense of the US a gaping vulnerability was found that is very difficult to close. The reaction of the Pentagon is reminiscent of badly hidden panic, and journalists who examined the results of the research of American experts, who thoroughly studied the condition of the American army and defensive industry, admit that there is iron logic in the recent “strange” actions of president Trump — he wants to save America from transforming into a cardboard tiger with paper claws.

The essence of the problem, according to the retelling of the columnist of the Reuters agency Andy Home, who obtained a copy of the September report of the US Department of Defence on the situation concerning key deliveries necessary for the American army, is reduced to one important figure. More than 300 (!) key elements necessary for the normal functioning of the US Armed Forces and defensive industry are under threat: American producers are either on the verge of bankruptcy or were already replaced by suppliers from China or other countries because of the deindustrialisation of national economy and the relocation of production to the countries of Southeast Asia.

Mr. Home gives as a striking and clear example the amusing (of course, if you are not a US military man) fact from the report: it turns out that the last American producer of the synthetic threads necessary for the production of army tents “died” quite recently. This means that in the event that the US will fall under such a “textile embargo”, for some American soldiers they will seriously face the prospect of sleeping in the open-air. It is difficult not to notice that such a prospect looks slightly humiliating for an army that claims to be the most hi-tech on the planet.

The situation could be considered as funny if it didn’t affect such a wide range of requirements of the American army and military-industrial complex. In the declassified part of the research of the American Department of Defence it is mentioned that in the US there are difficulties with future deliveries of the power switches that nearly all American missiles are equipped with. As officials of the Pentagon report, the producer of these switches was closed down, but the highest military ranks learned about it only after it became clear that the power switches ended. And there is nowhere to take new ones from, because the producer disappeared into thin air a whole 2 years ago. One more striking example: the country’s only producer of solid rocket motors for “air-to-air” missiles, as the American officials write, “encountered technical production issues”, the reasons for which couldn’t be found even after government and military experts were involved. Attempts to restart production failed, and the Pentagon was obliged to employ a Norwegian company to ensure uninterrupted deliveries. Obviously, this indicates a certain technical degradation of the entire American system, because only the loss of some key competencies can explain a situation in which production cannot be restored and the problem cannot even be determined.

Whilst becoming acquainted with the complaints of the leadership of the American army it is difficult to rid oneself of the impression that it isn’t a document of the US Department of Defence dated September, 2018 that is in front of your eyes, but a description of the problems of the Russian army from the era of the dashing 90’s. Literally there is no direction in which there would be no serious or very serious problems, and often they even can’t be solved at the expense of the bottomless military budget.

In the section on nuclear weapon problems the Pentagon complains that in the US there isn’t the necessary number of engineers and technicians who would have the corresponding education, training, and US citizenship that are necessary for working with army nuclear objects. The mention of nationality is of importance, because American higher education institutions produce enough engineers, physicists, and representatives of other technical specialties and exact sciences, however a disproportionately large number of these graduates are foreigners, most often from the People’s Republic of China.

Americans can’t find not only the necessary engineers, but also the necessary microelectronics for nuclear weapons. And they complain that they no longer have the right to trust suppliers of electronic components – after all,

“the supply chain is globalised”. In translation from American bureaucratese into colloquial Russian it means: “the microelectronics for our nuclear missiles are made in China, and we don’t know what the Chinese have stuffed in it”.

There are serious difficulties even concerning issues that should be solved very easily in the conditions of hi-tech American economy. For example, the Pentagon complains about a lack of tools for the development of software, as well as the management of data and production, that could be trusted. The situation is exacerbated by “poor cybersecurity practices by many key software vendors”. This, when translated from American bureaucratese into colloquial Russian, means: “concerning cybersecurity, our vendors are so bad that we don’t know what the Chinese and Russian hackers cram into the software that our military use”.

Main conclusion of the report:

“China represents a significant and growing risk to the supply of materials deemed strategic and critical to U.S. national security. <…> Areas of concern to America’s manufacturing and defense industrial base include a growing number of both widely used and specialized metals, alloys and other materials, including rare earths and permanent magnets”.

In general everything is bad, starting with aluminium and ending with cybersecurity, from power switches for missiles to engineers and drill operators, and from computer numerical control machines to synthetic fabric for military tents. The greed of American business, the ideology of globalisation, and the iron belief that history, as Fukuyama predicted, is about to end collectively caused such damage to the defense capability of the US that the geopolitical opponents couldn’t even dream of. It is precisely by understanding this fact that explains Donald Trump’s attempts to carry out the reindustrialisation of America almost by force.

However, there is every reason to believe that, taking into account the present economic difficulties, it’s unlikely that Trump’s administration will be able to fix what its predecessors broke 20 years. And we [Russians – ed] and our Chinese partners need, on the one hand, not to repeat the mistakes of Americans, and on the other hand — to make the most of these mistakes. Judging by what is happening now on the world stage, this is exactly what Moscow and Beijing are doing.

After a simple jewelry heist goes terribly wrong, the surviving criminals begin to suspect that one of them is a police informant. On November 7 and 9, we will show Tarantino's first two films.... Starting by Reservoir Dogs named "Greatest Independent Film of all Time"."It's unclear whether this macho thriller does anything to improve the state of the world or our understanding of it, but it certainly sets off enough rockets to hold us and shake us for every one of its 99 minutes." - Jonathan Rosenbaum, Chicago Reader

JEWISH KING JESUS IS COMING AT THE RAPTURE FOR US IN THE CLOUDS-DON'T MISS IT FOR THE WORLD.THE BIBLE TAKEN LITERALLY- WHEN THE PLAIN SENSE MAKES GOOD SENSE-SEEK NO OTHER SENSE-LEST YOU END UP IN NONSENSE.GET SAVED NOW- CALL ON JESUS TODAY.THE ONLY SAVIOR OF THE WHOLE EARTH - NO OTHER. 1 COR 15:23-JESUS THE FIRST FRUITS-CHRISTIANS RAPTURED TO JESUS-FIRST FRUITS OF THE SPIRIT-23 But every man in his own order: Christ the firstfruits; afterward they that are Christ’s at his coming.ROMANS 8:23 And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.(THE PRE-TRIB RAPTURE)

LUKE 21:28-29 28 And when these things begin to come to pass,(ALL THE PROPHECY SIGNS FROM THE BIBLE) then look up, and lift up your heads; for your redemption (RAPTURE) draweth nigh.29 And he spake to them a parable; Behold the fig tree,(ISRAEL) and all the trees;(ALL INDEPENDENT COUNTRIES)30 When they now shoot forth, ye see and know of your own selves that summer is now nigh at hand.(ISRAEL LITERALLY BECAME AND INDEPENDENT COUNTRY JUST BEFORE SUMMER IN MAY 14,1948.)

JOEL 2:3,303 A fire devoureth (ATOMIC BOMB) before them;(RUSSIAN-ARAB-MUSLIM ARMIES AGAINST ISRAEL) and behind them a flame burneth: the land is as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; yea, and nothing shall escape them.30 And I will shew wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke.(ATOMIC BOMB AFFECT)

ZECHARIAH 14:12-1312 And this shall be the plague wherewith the LORD will smite all the people that have fought against Jerusalem; Their flesh shall consume away while they stand upon their feet,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their eyes shall consume away in their holes,(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB) and their tongue shall consume away in their mouth.(DISOLVED FROM ATOMIC BOMB)(BECAUSE NUKES HAVE BEEN USED ON ISRAELS ENEMIES)(GOD PROTECTS ISRAEL AND ALWAYS WILL)13 And it shall come to pass in that day, that a great tumult from the LORD shall be among them; and they shall lay hold every one on the hand of his neighbour, and his hand shall rise up against the hand of his neighbour.(1/2-3 BILLION DIE IN WW3)(THIS IS AN ATOMIC BOMB EFFECT)

EZEKIEL 20:4747 And say to the forest of the south, Hear the word of the LORD; Thus saith the Lord GOD; Behold, I will kindle a fire in thee, and it shall devour every green tree in thee, and every dry tree: the flaming flame shall not be quenched, and all faces from the south to the north shall be burned therein.

ZEPHANIAH 1:1818 Neither their silver nor their gold shall be able to deliver them in the day of the LORD'S wrath; but the whole land shall be devoured by the fire of his jealousy: for he shall make even a speedy riddance of all them that dwell in the land.

MALACHI 4:11 For, behold, the day cometh, that shall burn as an oven;(FROM ATOMIC BOMBS) and all the proud, yea, and all that do wickedly, shall be stubble: and the day that cometh shall burn them up, saith the LORD of hosts, that it shall leave them neither root nor branch.

And here are the bounderies of the land that Israel will inherit either through war or peace or God in the future. God says its Israels land and only Israels land. They will have every inch God promised them of this land in the future.Egypt east of the Nile River, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, The southern part of Turkey and the Western Half of Iraq west of the Euphrates. Gen 13:14-15, Psm 105:9,11, Gen 15:18, Exe 23:31, Num 34:1-12, Josh 1:4.ALL THIS LAND ISRAEL WILL DEFINATELY OWN IN THE FUTURE, ITS ISRAELS NOT ISHMAELS LAND.12 TRIBES INHERIT LAND IN THE FUTURE

European signatories to Iran nuclear deal condemn new US sanctions-France, UK, Germany and EU ‘deeply regret’ American measures, call accord ‘essential for the security of Europe, the region and the whole world’-By AFP-5 November 2018

PARIS — France, Germany, Britain and the European Union issued a joint condemnation Friday of the US move to place fresh sanctions on the Iranian economy, vowing to protect European companies doing “legitimate” business with Tehran.“We deeply regret the reimposition of sanctions by the United States stemming from their withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action,” the statement said in reference to the hard-fought 2015 nuclear deal with Iran.Struck between world powers and Tehran after years of fraught negotiations, the deal was aimed at limiting Iran’s nuclear capabilities in exchange for sanctions relief.But US President Donald Trump announced in May that he was walking away from the deal and would reimpose sanctions, leaving the EU scrambling to protect companies that have forged trade links with Iran.Friday’s statement from EU nations defended the deal as “essential for the security of Europe, the region and the whole world.”“Our objective is to protect European economic actors involved in legitimate commercial trade with Iran,” it added.Europe will also seek to “maintain financial channels operational with Iran and to ensure the continuation of Iranian oil and gas exports,” it said.US officials said Friday that Washington was adding 700 individuals and entities to its Iran blacklist and pressuring the global SWIFT banking network to cut off Tehran when expanded sanctions are put in place next week.US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the sanctions were aimed at getting Tehran to halt its nuclear activities and what the US says is broad support for terrorism in the region.The EU says 12 consecutive reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency show that Iran has stuck to the terms of the deal.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration on Friday announced the reimposition of all US sanctions on Iran that had been lifted under the 2015 nuclear deal, ramping up economic pressure on the Islamic Republic as President Donald Trump completed the unraveling of what had been one of his predecessor’s signature foreign policy achievements.The sanctions, which will take effect on Monday, cover Iran’s shipping, financial and energy sectors and are the second batch the administration has reimposed since Trump withdrew from the landmark accord in May. The rollback ends US participation in the nuclear deal, which now hangs in the balance as Iran no longer enjoys any relief from sanctions imposed by the world’s largest economy.Shortly after the announcement, Trump tweeted a movie poster-like image of himself walking out of what appears to be fog with the phrase “Sanctions are Coming, November 5.”With limited exceptions, the sanctions will hit countries that do not stop importing Iranian oil and foreign firms that do business with blacklisted Iranian entities, including its central bank, a number of private financial institutions, and state-run port and shipping firms, as well as hundreds of individual Iranian officials.pic.twitter.com/nk2vKvHuaL— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2018-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the sanctions are “aimed at fundamentally altering the behavior of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” He has issued a list of 12 demands that Iran must meet if it wants the sanctions lifted. Those include ending support for terrorism and military engagement in Syria and a complete halt to its nuclear and ballistic missile development.“Our ultimate aim is to compel Iran to permanently abandon its well-documented outlaw activities and behave as a normal country,” Pompeo told reporters in a conference call with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. “Maximum pressure means maximum pressure.”Pompeo said eight nations will receive temporary waivers allowing them to continue to import Iranian petroleum products for a limited period as they move to end such imports entirely. He said those countries, which other officials said would include US allies such as Turkey, Italy, India, Japan and South Korea, had made efforts to eliminate their imports but could not complete the task by Monday.The waivers, expected to be announced Monday, will be valid for six months, during which time the importing country can buy Iranian oil but must deposit Iran’s revenue in an escrow account. Iran can spend the money but only on a narrow range of humanitarian items. Pompeo said two of the eight countries would wind down imports to zero within weeks.Mnuchin said 700 more Iranian companies and people would be added to the sanctions rolls. Those, he said, would include more than 300 that had not been included under previous sanctions.“We are sending a very clear message with our maximum pressure campaign: that the US intends to aggressively enforce our sanctions,” he said.Iran hawks in Congress and elsewhere were likely to be disappointed in the sanctions as they had been pushing for no oil import waivers as well as the complete disconnection of Iran from the main international financial messaging network known as SWIFT.One group that has been highly critical of the deal welcomed the new sanctions but said there should be no exceptions.“We encourage the Trump administration to fulfill the promise of a maximum pressure campaign — no exceptions — until Iran permanently and verifiably changes its behavior,” United Against a Nuclear Iran said in a statement. “Oil and gas firms, including those from friendly countries like India, South Korea and Japan, should not be granted sanctions waivers. Similarly, financial entities — including SWIFT — must sever ties with Iranian banks and financial institutions.”Mnuchin defended the decision to allow some Iranian banks to remain connected to SWIFT, saying that the Belgium-based firm had been warned that it will face penalties if sanctioned institutions are permitted to use it. And, he said that US regulators would be watching closely Iranian transactions that use SWIFT to ensure any that run afoul of US sanctions would be punished.Pompeo, meanwhile, defended the oil waivers, saying US efforts to cut Iran’s petroleum revenue had already been successful. He noted that since May, when the US began to press countries to stop buying Iranian oil, Iran’s exports had dropped by more than 1 million barrels per day.Pompeo and Mnuchin both said the sanctions will have exceptions for humanitarian purchases.The 2015 nuclear deal, one of former president Barack Obama’s signature foreign policy achievements, gave Iran billions of dollars in sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program, which many believed it was using to develop atomic weapons. Trump repeatedly denounced the agreement as the “worst ever” negotiated by the United States and vowed to withdraw from it during the 2016 presidential campaign.Trump and other critics of the deal said it gave Iran too much in return for too little, allowed Iran to gradually resume nuclear activity that could eventually be used for weapons development and did not address any of the country’s other problematic activities.Obama-era officials as well as the other parties to the deal — Britain, China, France, Germany, Russia and the European Union — have vehemently defended it. The Europeans have mounted a drive to save the agreement from the US withdrawal, fearing that the new sanctions will drive Iran to pull out and resume all of its nuclear work.

New defence for Infowars in copyright case? "Pepe the Toad"-[The Canadian Press]-YAHOONEWS-November 5, 2018

The internet trolls who turned Pepe the Frog into a hate symbol may be disappointed to hear a new claim about the cartoon character's origins, courtesy of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones' Infowars website .Infowars' attorneys claim in a court filing Thursday that Pepe the Frog creator Matt Furie based his character on a "pre-existing, strikingly similar" Argentine cartoon character named "El Sapo Pepe," or "Pepe the Toad."That's a new defence for Infowars against a copyright infringement lawsuit that Furie filed in March over the site's sales of a poster copying the character.Infowars' attorneys argue Furie could be precluded from asserting any copyright interest in his creation if Pepe the Frog is an "unauthorized derivative work" based on Pepe the Toad. Or it could "at least severely the scope of copyright protection in the character," they wrote."You've got to ask yourself if Mr. Furie's work is truly original," Infowars attorney Marc Randazza said during a telephone interview Friday. "I think it's at least worth taking a closer look."Louis Tompros, one of Furie's attorneys, said the California-based cartoonist had never heard of "El Sapo Pepe" before receiving a letter from Infowars's attorneys about it."So, it definitely did not inspire his creation of Pepe,' Tompros wrote in an email Friday.A federal judge set a July 2019 trial date for the lawsuit Furie filed against Infowars in Los Angeles.It was the second such case that Furie has brought as part of a legal campaign to reclaim his creation.Infowars' website is the online platform for right-wing radio host Jones. Furie's lawsuit says he didn't authorize the site to sell a poster that depicts the anthropomorphic frog alongside images of Jones, President Donald Trump, far-right agitator Milo Yiannopoulos and other right-wing figures.Jones has described the lawsuit as a "publicity stunt" and said he views it as an expression of political speech protected by the First Amendment."My listeners understand this is all frivolous," Jones told The Associated Press in March.Infowars was selling the Pepe-adorned "MAGA" poster for $29.95 and says it was created by "renowned artist and patriot" Jon Allen. Jones said Infowars has sold about 1,000 of the posters but added that it's hardly one of the site's most popular items.Furie's "chill frog-dude" debuted in a 2006 comic book called "Boy's Club" and became a popular canvas for benevolent internet memes. But the user-generated mutations grew increasingly hateful and ubiquitous more than a year before the 2016 presidential election, when Furie's creation become an online mascot for white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists.The Anti-Defamation League branded Pepe as a hate symbol in September 2016 and promoted Furie's efforts to reclaim the character.Twitter banned Jones and Infowars from the social media platform earlier this year for abusive behaviour . Jones has been sued by targets of his conspiracy theories, including parents of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012. Jones questioned whether the shooting rampage was a hoax.Michael Kunzelman, The Associated Press.

EARTH DESTROYED WITH THE EARTH IN NOAHS DAY(BECAUSE OF SIN,VIOLENCE AND GODLESS PEOPLE)

GENESIS 6:11-1311 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.(WORLD TERRORISM,MURDERS)(HAMAS IN HEBREW IS VIOLENCE)12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence (TERRORISM)(HAMAS) through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

HOSEA 4:1-31 Hear the word of the LORD, ye children of Israel: for the LORD hath a controversy with the inhabitants of the land, because there is no truth, nor mercy, nor knowledge of God in the land.2 By swearing, and lying, and killing, and stealing, and committing adultery, they break out, and blood toucheth blood.3 Therefore shall the land mourn, and every one that dwelleth therein shall languish, with the beasts of the field, and with the fowls of heaven; yea, the fishes of the sea also shall be taken away.

DEUTORONOMY 28:22-2422 The LORD shall smite thee with a consumption, and with a fever, and with an inflammation, and with an extreme burning, and with the sword, and with blasting, and with mildew; and they shall pursue thee until thou perish.23 And thy heaven that is over thy head shall be brass, and the earth that is under thee shall be iron.24 The LORD shall make the rain of thy land powder and dust: from heaven shall it come down upon thee, until thou be destroyed.

STORMS HURRICANES-TORNADOES

LUKE 21:25-2625 And there shall be signs in the sun,(HEATING UP-SOLAR ECLIPSES) and in the moon,(MAN ON MOON-LUNAR ECLIPSES) and in the stars;(ASTEROIDS ETC) and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity;(MASS CONFUSION) the sea and the waves roaring;(FIERCE WINDS)26 Men’s hearts failing them for fear,(TORNADOES,HURRICANES,STORMS) and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth:(DESTRUCTION) for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.(FROM QUAKES,NUKES ETC)

THE FIRST JUDGEMENT OF THE EARTH STARTED WITH WATER-IT ONLY MAKES SENSE THE LAST GENERATION WILL BE HAVING FLOODINGGENESIS 7:6-126 And Noah was six hundred years old when the flood of waters was upon the earth.7 And Noah went in, and his sons, and his wife, and his sons’ wives with him, into the ark, because of the waters of the flood.8 Of clean beasts, and of beasts that are not clean, and of fowls, and of every thing that creepeth upon the earth,9 There went in two and two unto Noah into the ark, the male and the female, as God had commanded Noah.10 And it came to pass after seven days, that the waters of the flood were upon the earth.11 In the six hundredth year of Noah’s life, in the second month, the seventeenth day of the month, the same day were all the fountains of the great deep broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened.12 And the rain was upon the earth forty days and forty nights.GOD PROMISED BY A RAINBOW-THE EARTH WOULD NEVER BE DESTROYED TOTALLY WITH A FLOOD AGAIN.BUT FLOODIING IS A SIGN OF JUDGEMENT.

FIRES AND EXPLOSIONS

REVELATION 8:77 The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned Friday that Yemen could face "the worst famine we have seen in decades" and urged the country's warring parties to immediately halt the violence.The UN chief told reporters "the urgency of the humanitarian crisis leaves no room for complacency" and the "building wave of momentum" for peace must be seized.UN humanitarian chief Mark Lowcock warned last week that "there is a clear and present danger of an imminent and great big famine engulfing Yemen" that could affect 14 million people — half of the country's population.The conflict began in 2014 when Houthi Shia rebels toppled the internationally recognized government. A Saudi-led coalition allied with the government has been fighting the Houthis since 2015.Guterres said more and more countries are engaged in helping create conditions for the warring parties to understand the need to cease hostilities and engage in serious negotiations.He urged the coalition and the Houthis "to overcome obstacles and resolve differences through dialogue" at UN facilitated talks later this month.Guterres stressed that "violence must stop everywhere — with an immediate halt around critical infrastructure and densely populated areas.""My objective is to appeal to the parties to the conflict to understand that there is an opportunity that must be seized, and to say that the humanitarian situation is so dire that if that doesn't happen" the world will have to deal with a famine in Yemen next year, he said."I must say, I hope the voice of reason will prevail," Guterres said.

WORLD POWERS IN THE LAST DAYS (END OF AGE OF GRACE NOT THE WORLD)

EUROPEAN UNION-KING OF WEST-DAN 9:26-27,DAN 7:23-24,DAN 11:40,REV 13:1-10EGYPT-KING OF THE SOUTH-DAN 11:40RUSSIA-KING OF THE NORTH-EZEK 38:1-2,EZEK 39:1-3CHINA-KING OF THE EAST-DAN 11:44,REV 9:16,18VATICAN-RELIGIOUS LEADER-REV 13:11-18,REV 17:4-5,9,18

WORLD TERRORISM

OH BY THE WAY WHEN THE MEDIA SAYS ALLU-AK-BAR MEANS GOD IS GREAT LIE. IN ISLAM ALLU-AK-BAR MEANS OUR GOD IS GREATER OR GREATEST. THIS IS HOW THE MEDIA SUCK HOLES UP TO ISLAMIC-QURANIC-MUSLIMS. BY WATERING DOWN THE REAL MEANING OF THE SEX FOR MURDER DEATH CULT ISLAM. TO MAKE IT SOUND LIKE A PEACEFUL RELIGION (CULT OF DEATH AND WORLD DOMINATION).

GENESIS 6:11-1311 The earth also was corrupt before God, and the earth was filled with violence.(WORLD TERRORISM,MURDERS)(HAMAS IN HEBREW IS VIOLENCE)12 And God looked upon the earth, and, behold, it was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth.13 And God said unto Noah, The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence (TERRORISM)(HAMAS) through them; and, behold, I will destroy them with the earth.

GENESIS 16:11-1211 And the angel of the LORD said unto her,(HAGAR) Behold, thou art with child, and shalt bear a son, and shalt call his name Ishmael;(FATHER OF THE ARAB/MUSLIMS) because the LORD hath heard thy affliction.12 And he (ISHMAEL-FATHER OF THE ARAB-MUSLIMS) will be a wild (DONKEY-JACKASS) man;(ISLAM IS A FAKE AND DANGEROUS SEX FOR MURDER CULT) his hand will be against every man,(ISLAM HATES EVERYONE) and every man's hand against him;(PROTECTING THEMSELVES FROM BEING BEHEADED) and he (ISHMAEL ARAB/MUSLIM) shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren.(LITERAL-THE ARABS LIVE WITH THEIR BRETHERN JEWS)

ISAIAH 14:12-1412 How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer,(SATAN) son of the morning!(HEBREW-CRECENT MOON-ISLAM) how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations!13 For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north:14 I (SATAN HAS EYE TROUBLES) will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High.(AND 1/3RD OF THE ANGELS OF HEAVEN FELL WITH SATAN AND BECAME DEMONS)

JOHN 16:22 They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service.(ISLAM MURDERS IN THE NAME OF MOON GOD ALLAH OF ISLAM)

Khashoggi crisis may tip Middle East power balance towards Turkey-October 2 killing inside Saudi consulate in Istanbul, by a team sent from Riyadh, has already severely tarnished Arab state’s reputation-By Ezzedine SAID-TOI-NOV 5,18

ISTANBUL, Turkey (AFP) — The murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi could alter the power dynamic in the Middle East by strengthening Turkey’s influence at Saudi Arabia’s expense as they compete for leadership of the Islamic world, analysts say.This certainly appears to be the goal of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the main regional supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, which Saudi Arabia and its allies Egypt and the United Arab Emirates consider a terrorist group.The killing inside the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul by a team sent from Riyadh on October 2 has already severely tarnished Saudi Arabia’s global reputation.But it is the potential involvement of Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, the oil-rich Gulf nation’s de facto leader known by his initials MBS, that could permanently damage Riyadh’s influence in the region.After initially insisting Khashoggi left the consulate unharmed, then saying he died in a brawl, the Saudi regime finally stated he was killed by a “rogue operation” and arrested 18 suspects, some with links to the crown prince.Analysts say Erdogan could use the ensuing crisis to weaken the 33-year-old prince, even potentially leading to the royal family removing him from power — though that seems unlikely.“The killing of Khashoggi has proven to be a golden opportunity for President Erdogan to pressure Saudi Arabia and work towards presenting Turkey as the new leader of the Muslim world,” said Lina Khatib, director of Middle East and North Africa Programme at Chatham House.“The Khashoggi crisis is a big geo-political gamble for Turkey and so far it looks like it is playing the game masterfully. But Turkey alone will not be able to push for the removal of MBS. The ball lies in the American court,” she added.For Erdogan, promoting the Muslim Brotherhood — which Saudi Arabia has sought to marginalize in the Arab world and which was ousted from power and brutally repressed in Egypt in 2013 by current President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi — is at the heart of this power struggle.The Turkish leader could also try to extract concessions from Riyadh for its ally Qatar, facing a Saudi blockade backed by the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Egypt since 2017.“I think that Erdogan sees this as an opportunity to push back against a triple entente in the Middle East that opposes his policies. That triple entente is composed of MBS, MBZ’s (Crown Prince Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan) UAE and Sissi’s Egypt,” said Soner Cagaptay, director of the Turkey Research Program at the Washington Institute.“These three countries, all Arabs, oppose Erdogan’s policies of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood. Now Erdogan sees a golden opportunity because MBS is vulnerable.”But Sinan Ulgen, president of the Centre for Economics and Foreign Policy, said “it remains to be seen whether Ankara can continue to leverage this conjuncture and turn it into a permanent advantage raising Turkey’s regional influence to the detriment of Saudi Arabia”.Nicholas Heras, an analyst at the Center for a New American Security, said the Khashoggi case was the “latest chapter in Turkey and Saudi Arabia’s ongoing contest over which country is better” to lead the Muslim world.“Erdogan clearly seems to believe that he can use the Khashoggi crisis as a way to cut Prince Mohammad bin Salman, and by extension, Saudi Arabia, down to size,” Heras added.By not directly pointing the blame at the crown prince over Khashoggi, Erdogan is seeking to keep him under pressure, according to Karim Bitar of the Paris-based French Institute for International and Strategic Affairs think-tank.“Erdogan knows that he still has ammunition that could weaken MBS in the international arena so basically he is rolling the dice these days trying to figure out how to maximise his profit after this huge Saudi blunder,” he told AFP.While the Muslim Brotherhood is important to Turkey, the West — especially the United States — is wary of the group and wants to focus any pressure on the crown prince towards ending the Yemen war and lifting the blockade on Qatar, the experts said.“I expect the blockade on Doha will likely come to an end in the near future and the Saudis find a way to support the UN’s efforts in Yemen,” said Steven Cook of the Council on Foreign Relations.Bitar noted that the US administration relies on Prince Mohammed’s support for any possible peace plan for the Israel-Palestinian conflict as well as containing Iran, long a Saudi foe.Washington could also push the crown prince towards “a rapprochement with Israel and to maintain a hawkish line towards Iran”, Bitar added.

An emerging cease-fire agreement aimed at calming months of violence on the Israel-Gaza border will last for three years and see a significant easing of the blockade on the Hamas-controlled territory, Lebanon’s Al-Akbar newspaper reported Saturday.According to the report, the deal being brokered by Egypt stipulates a gradual stop to the ongoing, Hamas-orchestrated violent border protests and maritime flotillas over the next two months. In addition, Hamas will be obligated to punish Gazans caught engaging in violent demonstrating along the border with Israel.In return, Egypt will permanently open its Rafah border crossing and lift 70 percent of its blockade on the Hamas-controlled territory, the report said, citing officials familiar with the emerging agreement.Al-Akbar said the deal would require Israel to grant 5,000 work permits for Gazans, and expand the Strip’s fishing zone from nine to 14 nautical miles.Israel had no immediate comment on the report.In addition, the paper reported the Palestinian Authority would pay 80% of the salaries of Hamas officials in Gaza, and would not object to Qatar bankrolling those wages for at least six months, like it has in the past.Within the framework of the agreement, the report said various economic projects in Gaza would be advanced to create jobs for some 30,000 jobs and alleviate the humanitarian situation in the Strip.The truce is slated to last three years and will be under the supervision of the United Nations and Russia. At later stage after the deal is implemented, Al-Akbar said Egypt would work to advance a prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas.The report was released after Friday’s weekly protests along the Gaza border saw a significant decrease in violence.According to the Hamas-run health ministry in the strip, 12 Palestinians were injured from live Israeli fire, and dozens injured from tear gas inhalation. The Associated Press said the figures were the lowest reported since the start of the demonstrations seven months ago.Official Fatah account posts a picture of what it says is a member of the Hamas-run security forces forcibly preventing protesters from approaching the border fence between Gaza and Israel https://t.co/XAgD08xXWL— Adam Rasgon (@adamrasgon1) November 2, 2018-A senior Hamas member said the clashes were scaled down to give diplomatic efforts a chance amid talk of a breakthrough in months of Egyptian-led negotiations.The official Twitter account of PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s Fatah faction even posted a picture of what it claimed to be a member of the Hamas-run security forces forcibly preventing protesters from approaching the Gaza border fence during Friday’s protests.Khalil al-Hayya said the terror group was “testing” Egyptian-led efforts to broker a ceasefire to ease an 11-year-old blockade on Gaza, but warned the clashes would resume if the blockade was not lifted.The IDF put turnout Friday at some 7,000 demonstrators with about half of those present approached the border fence, while the rest remained at a distance and did not clash with soldiers. The protest ended earlier than usual.For months, Egypt and UN officials have been engaged in indirect talks between Hamas, the Islamist terror group that runs the Gaza Strip, and Israel.Israel has accused Hamas, which is sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, of leading the protests and using them as cover to carry out attacks against troops stationed the border.Last week, seven Palestinians were reported killed in the weekly border protests. The bloodshed was followed by rockets launched at Israel by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, which were met with and retaliatory Israeli airstrikes, dashing hopes of what was expected to be a calmer week in Gaza.Since the often violent protests began on March 30, over 150 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire during demonstrations and clashes along the border, including a number of people who broke through the fence into Israel. Dozens of the fatalities were Hamas members. During that time, one Israeli soldier has been killed by a Palestinian sniper.

Palestinian-American woman detained at airport, to be deported-Immigration authorities say decision to deny Susan Abulhawa entry due to past incident at border crossing and not connected to BDS-By AFP-5 November 2018

A Palestinian-American writer has been detained on arrival at Israel’s main airport and will be deported, Palestinian and Israeli officials said Friday.Susan Abulhawa was refused entry at Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport on Thursday evening, said a spokesman for the Palestinian Literature Festival, which Abulhawa had been set to attend.She appealed the decision in an Israeli court Friday morning but her appeal was rejected, meaning she was likely to be deported in the coming hours, the spokesman added.Abulhawa, author of the novel “Mornings in Jenin,” had been due to appear at panel events in both Jerusalem and the West Bank city of Ramallah during the festival, which is co-sponsored by the British Council.Immigration authority spokeswoman Sabine Haddad told AFP the writer was refused entry because of an incident in 2015 when she refused to answer questions by security personnel when attempting to enter though a land crossing from neighboring Jordan.“She was refused entry then and told that the next time she arrived she had to coordinate in advance,” Haddad said in Hebrew.This time “she landed without arranging entry in advance.”Haddad added that Abulhawa’s detention was not related to support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.In March 2017, Israel’s parliament passed a law barring entry to supporters of BDS, which seeks to isolate the Jewish state internationally.Last month an American student spent two weeks in Israeli detention appealing an entry ban over her past involvement in a campus group that supports boycotting Israel.Lara Alqasem was eventually allowed to enter Israel after its Supreme Court overturned a lower court ruling upholding the state’s decision to deny her entry.Alqasem’s detention came after a number of other high-profile cases in which travelers to Israel were questioned over their political views and alleged support for BDS, drawing scrutiny to the law barring boycott supporters.Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.

Egyptian delegation tours Gaza clashes as promised calm largely holds-Hamas member says violence reined in to give Egyptian truce efforts a chance, but warns of escalation if blockade not lifted-By TOI staff and Agencies-5 November 2018

An Egyptian security delegation toured the Gaza border protests Friday, and even though thousands of Palestinians turned up, they were the quietest in several months, witnesses said.The visit came amid efforts by Egypt to broker a ceasefire between Israel and the Gaza Strip’s Hamas rulers.The delegation briefly attended the demonstrations in northern Gaza, a statement from the head of the organizing committee said. Eyewitnesses said a car carrying the delegation briefly drove to a protest site a few hundred meters from the border, before departing.A senior Hamas member said the clashes were scaled down to give diplomatic efforts a chance amid talk of a breakthrough in months of Egyptian-led negotiations.Khalil al-Hayya said the terror group is “testing” Egyptian-led efforts to broker a ceasefire to ease an 11-year-old blockade on Gaza.Fiercer clashes will resume if the blockade remains in place, al-Hayya warned.Israel and Egypt largely sealed their borders with Gaza after Hamas seized control in 2007 from the Palestinian Authority, citing a need to prevent weapons smuggling.Thousands again gathered at multiple sites near the frontier Friday but largely stayed away from the border fence, AFP correspondents said.Security forces loyal to Hamas prevented protesters from approaching the border too closely, the correspondents said.The Haaretz daily put turnout at some 7,000 demonstrators and quoted the Israel Defense Forces as saying about half of those present approached the border fence, while the rest remained at a distance and did not clash with soldiers.The protest ended earlier than usual.The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza said 32 Palestinians were injured during the protests, including seven by Israeli fire, which The Associated Press said was the lowest casualty figures reported since the start of the demonstrations.Armed factions in Gaza on Thursday had agreed to rein in violence along the security fence in light of the latest Egyptian-efforts to reach a ceasefire with Israel.A senior Hamas member told the Ynet news site groups in Gaza agreed to stop protesters from burning tires, throwing firebombs and approaching the border during rallies until Sunday.He said the protesters would also refrain from launching incendiary devices toward Israel over the weekend.Egypt and UN officials have been engaged in indirect talks between Hamas, the Islamist terror group that runs the Gaza Strip, and Israel.Israel has accused Hamas, which is sworn to the destruction of the Jewish state, of leading the protests and using them as cover to carry out attacks against troops stationed the border-Since often violent protests began on March 30, over 150 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire during protests and clashes along the border, including a number of people who broke through the fence into Israel. Dozens of the fatalities were Hamas members.One Israeli soldier has been killed by a Palestinian sniper.In a statement after a meeting of their leaders in Gaza on Thursday, Hamas and Islamic Jihad said the marches would continue, albeit without violence.Both groups praised Egyptian and UN efforts to broker a deal.A separate statement by Islamic Jihad carried by Israeli media threatened that it would use a “new tactic” along the border, without providing details.A leader of the Iran-backed terror group told Haaretz the Egyptians had agreed to work to curb any Israeli response to the protests over the next three weeks. The unnamed official said the protests could be called off after that period if Israel keeps to its commitment to ease a blockade on the Strip.There was no comment from Egyptian officials.Last week’s clashes, in which seven Palestinians were reported killed, was followed by Islamic Jihad rocket launches at Israel and retaliatory Israeli Air Force raids, dashing hopes of what was expected to be a calmer weekend along the border.

Jewish researchers have won Nobel prizes greatly out of proportion to the world's Jewish population, but it's a step too far to say, as Inandout does, that "Jews invent most of the day to day technology we take for granted."
William Shockley led the team of three which developed the transistor, probably the most important invention of the 20th century. Most of our electronic gizmos stem from this technology. Shockley went on to become a champion of eugenics, an extremist who is a hero of many far right-wing outsiders.
Judaism fosters development of intellectuals, and in my view New Zealand would have benefited greatly if we had taken in far, far more Jewish refugees in the 1930s. Depending on your views, that would have been by stimulating the national intellectual level and education, or, by lifting the IQ of the NZ gene pool.
But technologists aren't designated by their race, their religion, or their politics. You just have to consider some of the achievements of Nazi Germany in World War 2. One example is the rocket knowledge which later gave both West and East blocs their starts in space technology.

There's no shortage of electric bicycles already available, so newcomers to the space need to offer something special before they get noticed. Unless you're already a household name. Automaker General Motors is planning to ride into this crowded arena with two e-bikes – a compact and a folder.

Behold the Rocket Z, a mid-engined nine-seater diesel 4x4Top GearIt might not surprise you to learn it comes from Russia, the home of unstoppable, go-anywhere boxes like the Avtoros Shaman. At a whisker under five metres, it's basically the length of a Land Rover Discovery, but it'll house an additional two ...

If you are a mobile developer in 2018, and are not consulting (at least on the side), you are missing out on a huge stream of revenue.

In the early days of mobile app development (2008/2009), it was fairly easy for an iOS or Android developer to get a gig with large companies (Food Network, ESPN, huge list of other names…). At that time, mobile was so new, that none of these companies had internal resources to support this budding vertical.

Throughout the next few years, mobile would sky rocket and all of these companies would hire internal teams to support their products.

This shift caused a huge disruption for mobile agencies who in the previous years were turning down $200+/hour because they simply didn't have the capacity. Many of them had to downsize or close their doors altogether. I was a part of one such company and have seen these shifts during the past 6 years of running mine.

I now believe the cycle is coming back around as there is a need for good mobile developers. The truth is, mobile is hard and there is a lot of competition in the space. Companies are discovering that they can't just hire a "full stack" dev and tell them to build a quality mobile app. It requires a lot of dedication and understanding of the ecosystem. Also, many of the small-medium consultancy in the space have since closed their doors. So supply is down and demand is way up.

I do however feel that the way in which consultants engage with companies has changed a bit. In previous years, most companies were interested in consulting teams / agencies to build their entire solution for them. These days, a "staff augmentation" model seems to make more sense.

In this model, consultants specializing in a vertical of mobile join other teams that lack a particular senior resource. This is a win-win for everyone as a consultant can attain consistent work and a company can hire temporary developers to solve their current problem at hand with no long term commitment. As a mobile developer, if you establish enough of these relationships, you are set on work for the foreseeable future.

We have seen this model play out many times over the past couple years and it has been key (for us) in surviving in this “post-agency” time of mobile app consulting.

So, if you are a mobile app developer (and are particularly good), I'd encourage you to branch out and try your hand at consulting. It's a great time.

Need something else to watch after all the results come in? Tonight NASA's launching a mission to explore Earth's ionosphere, but this isn't the average rocket launch. The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) will take off on a Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket -- in use since the 90s, and scheduled for use with the giant Stratolaunch once that's ready to fly -- that's being dropped from a specially designed plane at about 40,000 feet over the open ocean.

Dubbed Stargazer L-1011, the carrier aircraft will take off from Cape Canaveral ahead of a 90-minute launch window that opens at 3 AM ET. As Space.com notes, the launch has been delayed over concerns about the rocket, but all the testing is complete and now it's ready to fly.

Wolf Eyes (now and for many years consisting of Aaron Dilloway, Nate Young and John Olson) have sprung out of the dystopian American Midwest. Having absorbed all their metal, hardcore punk and free jazz influences, they channel them into something new, raw, and angry that we had to define it, only as a reduction, as noise. Letting the world know about their vision of a new music by millions of limiter run cassettes and cdr’s plus some vinyl, they managed to escape labels. By collaborating in the mid-00s with Anthony Braxton on the beautiful monster of an album called Black Vomit, they made it clear that genres were obsolete to them. By 2009’s Always Wrong their music could easily be described as modern blues, with cathartic lyrics about the gutter of our feelings taking a stand. Since then, they have been forging bonds with what we could call (my definition) the outer limits of free rock like in 2013’s No Answer-Lower Floors. As always playing live is a totally different beast, one that can easily devour a musician and sometimes the audience as well. This is pretty much the reason I was so eager to catch them live for the first time.

It’s been two years since I last visited the heavily gentrified area of Dalston and from now on I’m crossing my fingers that Oto will be able to hang in there. The prices around the area seem to be skyrocketing. Good old capitalism, I guess. The three day residency at Café Oto seemed like an extravaganza of like minded artists. I managed to catch the first two days. The second day, Saturday, was sold out but I guess that even on the day before the place was packed. And it was nice to see some weirdos (no, I do not mean myself) instead of the usually hip crowd of Oto.

The opening set of Vicky Langan and Aaron Dilloway did not deliver. Even though they both tried hard by switching knots and pushing contact microphones to their limits, like static, it lacked energy. The guys from the Wolf Eyes were up next for a small set, but they decided not to play safe (by just giving us a “casual” Eyes show), a decision that went for Saturday as well. So it was an expanded version of Wolf Eyes, the Universal Eyes (an offshoot of Wolf Eyes with members of the band Universal Indians), along with Gretchen Davidson. I strongly believe that this is the core of a live version: presenting a new image, an altered one, something different. Their sound was huge. Nate Young was a dominant figure with vocals coming out the belly of the beast while Olson's sax shrieked between notes and an amorphous maze of noise. Yes, yes, I know, free jazz. Aaron, always the quiet presence, along with Davidson, provided an elastic electro-acoustic mayhem. It was cathartic at times.

The Universal Eyes stayed on. They must have liked it as much as the audience. Now it was with the duo of Elvin Brandhi and Gwilly Edmondez, the Yeah You. Having never heard them before, I’m not sure I got the right idea (if there’s such a thing) of what they exactly do. But, certainly they blended and reacted with the quartet of Universal Eyes amazingly. This six piece performance was the highlight of the two days. Many times, it seems that collaborations tend to suck out each other’s energy. Quite the opposite that night. The visions of six people, two different groups of musicians came together to form a new kind of ecstasy, some kind of transcendence. A psychedelic jungle maybe. Their forty minute set seemed to last forever, constantly climaxing until the very last second. A wonderful chaos.

The second day started with a DJ-set by Vicky Langan, and I must admit that she performed much better through this than the day before. I really enjoyed the weirdness of her set and how it was constructed to prepare us for what was about to come. For some reason, though, her set lasted very long. When the guys from Triple Negative finally took the small stage on Oto, I realized that probably they were just late. There seemed to exist some tension between them and those situations, very often, produce fruitful results. Well, not this time. Their performance was a mix of rock poses on guitar, a wind instrument that was literally inaudible and some piano with lyrics that were taking off on their own. Believe me, I have nothing against cacophony (quite the contrary) but this was not working and, disappointingly, there was little unity and collectiveness between them and the audience. Pretty disappointing.

The Universal Eyes returned for the last performance of the day. Saturday was the day of more rhythm and less noise. Young started off with some poetry, as he pointed out. I had the image that it was part two, like side b of the same record. Having heard side a just yesterday. It was less fun, more serious, more like an angry choice of words and sound. I would say that the term modern blues is more suitable for that performance. The pulsating, rhythmic monster of their sound was gradually hovering, going up and down in terms of volume, becoming a solid entity at the end. There was no catharsis on the second day but more movement of the bodies.

In January last year, a rocket carrying a tiny chip packed with rubidium-87 atoms was launched more than 200 kilometres (124 miles) above the planet’s surface. The mission was brief, affording just six minutes of microgravity at its height. But in that time the tiny chip briefly held the record for being the coldest spot […]

Post World War II was a time of great prosperity and idealism in America, as the middle class grew in numbers and in strength financially. As a suburban lifestyle developed, consumerism sky rocketed. The demand for novelty and a significantly larger consuming population led to uniquely American designs, both good and bad but iconic of mass design in the 1950s to 1960s.

Ariana Grande is heading to The Ellen DeGeneres Show on Wednesday and the show's host Ellen DeGeneres and Grande both shared snippets of the performance. It will be Grande's first time performing her new song "thank u, next" live. In her tweet, DeGeneres wrote Grande "is performing exclusively tomorrow. thank u, ariana. thank u, next."

Next: on to Grande's description of her performance. The "God Is a Woman" singer posted a video and a few photos from Ellen alongside her co-writers of the song and back-up singers, Tayla Parx and Victoria Monet. What's striking about Grande's upcoming performance on Ellen is that she, Parx and Monet are all wearing white and the stage decorations are made to look like a wedding. There's even a massive cake behind her.

The attire and decor decisions are extremely intentional, of course. In one of her photos, Grande captioned the picture of the three of them "first wives club 2018..."

Her caption "first wives club" refers to the film The First Wives Club, which starred Dianne Keaton, Goldie Hawn and Bette Mildler. Each of those stars got tagged in her photo, too. The film is about women seeking revenge of their exes and prioritizing their relationships with each other. In the final scene of the movie, Keaton, Hawn and Midler sing "You Don't Own Me" and they, too, are dressed in all white and at a wedding venue.

No subtleties get past Grande.

In her song "thank u, next" Grande refers to getting married and having a wedding. She and Pete Davidson recently ended their engagement, hence her allusion to the big day. "One day I'll walk down the aisle / Holding hands with my mama," she sings in the final verse. "Only wanna do it once, real bad / Gon' make that s--t last."

The anthem also preaches self-love, which she sings about in the second verse. "I ain't worried 'bout nothin' / Plus, I met someone else / We havin' better discussions / I know they say I move on too fast / But this one gon' last / 'Cause her name is Ari / And I'm so good with that," she croons.

The "Bang Bang" singer revealed that her exes, who she mentions by name in the first verse, heard the song before its release on Saturday. The song begins, "Thought I'd end up with Sean / But he wasn't a match / Wrote some songs about Ricky / Now I listen and laugh / Even almost got married / And for Pete, I'm so thankful / Wish I could say 'thank you' to Malcolm / 'Cause he was an angel."

In the days and hours leading up to the song dropping, Grande interspersed song lyrics and other info about the tune on Twitter. For instance, in one message, she wrote, "'m so .... f--kin ..... grateful." That line referred to Davidson, who she wrote about in a subsequent tweet.

Grande, however, wanted to ensure her listeners and followers that "thank u, next" was not meant to be a clap-back or revenge song. She called it "far from a diss track" and proclaimed it was "the opposite."

NJ-Carlstadt, ARDE, an Aerojet Rocketdyne company, designs and manufactures pressure vessels (tanks) for aerospace applications. We are looking for a Senior Analyst, General Ledger Accounting in our Carlstadt, NJ facility. This position reports to the Finance Manager and is a key member of a dynamic team responsible for providing rapid and high-quality financial information. This current opening may be filled a

Real-world observations contradict Mann’s claims: Dr. Mann claims that “it’s not rocket science” that global warming has led to “unprecedented” extremes in droughts (too little precipitation) and floods (too much precipitation). He insists that we must take “concerted action” to mitigate our use of fossil fuels so as to avert these “disastrous” and “devastating” extreme weather consequences. Mann classifies those who disagree with him about the link between AGW and these extreme weather events as “climate deniers”.

Make your list and check it twice: the holiday gifting season is here and we have the inside scoop at what trends are topping wish lists this year. According to Etsy search data, nostalgia is running deep – we’re seeing a return to all-things retro, from vintage toys to mid-century gift wrap, reminding us all of the holiday celebrations of our childhoods.

Based on a recent survey, 86% of Etsy buyers would prefer to give a gift than receive one, and Etsy sellers offer creative and thoughtful items to help shoppers become the best gift-givers of the season. Check out the latest and greatest gifting trends below.

GIFTS

Unplugged activities

Remember the days of hanging out with your family and playing hours of board games? Well, those days are back. With so much of our time devoted to our devices, holiday shoppers are rebelling against technology and opting for quality time over screen time. So far this year, Etsy has seen over 7,300,000 searches related to “games” and over 377K searches related to “DIY” – so unplug, get creative, and spend time with your loved ones.

The (better) selfie

You heard it here first: Custom illustrations are the newselfie. In the past three months (July-September) Etsy has seen a 23% uptick in searches related to “custom portraits” (compared to the same time last year). These personalized pieces of art are the ultimate gifts, and a thoughtful way to express love for your family, friends, and fur babies. Pet and family portraits are especially popular on Etsy, with “pet portraits” spiking 51% and “family portraits” skyrocketing 93% in the past three months alone (July-September), compared to the same time last year.

Faux Bouqs: Plants you can’t kill

Last year, we all became plant people, and during that time many of us discovered that our inner green thumbs weren’t quite green. Shoppers don’t have to miss out on becoming plant parents just because of that – cactus candles, pillows, and other faux options are the perfect gifts for people who want greenery in their lives, without having to worry about over-watering or sun placement. Holiday shoppers, take note: So far this year, Etsy has seen a 41% spike in searches related to “faux plants”.

Modern heirlooms

Etsy sellers are helping shoppers preserve old memories and capture new ones with modern heirlooms – like dishware with your grandma’s exact pie recipe (and even in her handwriting!), modern family trees, and more. Searches related to “family heirlooms” have spiked 1,607% in the past three months alone (July-September).

Vintage toys

Vintage home and fashion items have always been a trend on Etsy, but now the focus is on toys. Parents (like this celebrity mom) are buying vintage toys, from rocking horses to alphabet blocks, as collectables that celebrate a simpler time. So far in 2018, searches on Etsy for “vintage toys” have seen over 204K searches and counting. Pro tip: when shopping for vintage toys for use by children, check the Consumer Product Safety Commission for any recalls and safety information.

Whimsical animals

In past years, mythical creatures like unicorns and mermaids have taken center stage, but today it’s all about realistic (yet still exotic) creatures. Animals like narwhals (which I like to call the unicorns of the sea) are especially popular: they’ve even seen an increase of 16% so far this year. Other favorites include llamas and sloths – Etsy has seen a 289% increase in searches related to “llamas” so far this year compared to the same time period last year, and searches for “sloths” has spiked 19% so far this year. Shoppers can find these whimsical animals in everything from jewelry to ceramics, and everything in between.

GIFT WRAP

Interactive wrapping

Shoppers are increasingly looking to personalize their gift wrapping and stand out from the typical cookie-cutter packaging, and this year it’s all about using packaging that is just as fun as the gift inside. In fact, searches related to “custom wrapping paper” have increased 25% so far this year. With options like DIY-able wrapping paper like chalkboard and coloring book paper, interactive packaging is a gift in of itself. Etsy has seen over 358K searches related to “coloring book” and over 768K searches related to “coloring” this year alone.

Pun-ful presentation

Puns are always a trend on Etsy, and this holiday season sellers are making everything from cheeky gift tags to playful wrapping paper, adding a dose of laughter to the most festive time of the year. Searches related to “funny holiday cards” have increased 43% so far this year on Etsy, so we have a feeling this holiday season might just be the funniest one yet.

Going retro

One of the biggest trends for the home decor this holiday season is the resurgence of retro and vintage motifs, and this trend is now taking hold in wrapping paper. In the past six months, Etsy has seen an 87% increase in searches related to “vintage holiday” (compared to the same time last year).

Planet-friendly packaging

Shoppers are becoming increasingly conscious about the items they purchase and opting for sustainable alternatives, extending all the way to holiday packaging. So far this year, Etsy has seen over 25K searches related to “wrapping cloth”. And, with Americans throwing away 25% more trash during the Thanksgiving to New Year’s than any other time of year, reusable gift wrap is an impactful way to reduce waste, while still still making your holiday gifts pop.

Dayna Isom Johnson is Etsy’s resident trend expert. Always on the hunt for the latest and greatest products, Dayna keeps her finger firmly on the pulse of the hottest market trends, up-and-coming Etsy designers, and sellers with exciting stories.

While the world is joining together in efforts to provide cooling access for all and mitigate climate change in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, it is time for governments to step up and ratify the Kigali Amendment. This should be a major priority for the Meeting of the Parties to the Montreal Protocol when it meets in Quito, Ecuador in November. Business is ready to deliver with sustainable and efficient cooling solutions.

Many of the refrigerants used in air-conditioners and other cooling equipment, while ozone friendly, still have an impact on climate change since the cooling sector accounts for 8% of global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol will result in a global phase-down of potent greenhouse gases. This represents a long-awaited breakthrough and an important contribution to mitigating climate change.

Technological developments and recognized safety standards have finally made it possible to begin implementing real long-term solutions that rely on low Global Warming Potential (GWP) refrigerants. We are ready with cooling solutions for countries that ratify the amendment. It is time for countries to step up in support of the ratification of Kigali Amendment.

The future depends on low GWP refrigerants

While essential to many aspects of our daily life, cooling contributes to GHG emissions. Today, air conditioners and electric fans alone account for 10% of global electricity consumption. With the demand for space cooling expected to skyrocket in the coming decades, it is projected that the share of cooling-related CO2 emissions worldwide will rise from 8% to 15% by 2050. So, to fix climate change, we need to fix cooling as well.

Alarm bells have been ringing since it was proven that certain substances and refrigerants used in refrigeration and air-conditioning were damaging the ozone layer. Thirty years ago, the Montreal Protocol was introduced to slash the use of ozone-depleting substances. It succeeded. As a result, the Montreal Protocol is often called the world’s most successful global agreement since the depletion of the ozone layer has been halted and is now under control.

The challenge now is to continue lowering greenhouse gas emissions produced by the cooling industry. Emissions of GHGs related to the use of energy for space cooling hinge primarily on the fuel mix in power generation. Nations that ratify the Kigali Amendment commit to cutting the production and consumption of high GWP refrigerants over the next 30 years and replacing them with climate-friendly refrigerant alternatives – action that also supports greater progress on the Paris Agreement.

Let´s ratify Kigali and protect our planet

Cooling, and hence refrigerants, are a necessity in today’s world. Climate change is making life in an increasing number of cities unlivable: they are getting hotter and driving up cooling demand. If the increased demand for cooling is meet by doing business as usual, it will create a vicious cycle with serious consequences for global warming since it will lead to continued increased demand for cooling

Consequently, we need to get the refrigerant challenge right. Just as some of yesterday’s solutions have improved today’s environment, the solutions of tomorrow need to use low-GWP refrigerants if we are to protect our planet.

At supermarkets, for example, a simple and quick best-practice solution would be to reduce refrigerant leakages. It is possible to effectively detect refrigerant leaks and response rapidly using available real-time and actionable data.

The training of cooling professionals should also be prioritized to improve the servicing and installation of refrigerants. At Danfoss, we are trying to lead the way and have just concluded our second Refrigerant Week. The Refrigerant Week initiative provides webinars and digital and educational tools to help industry colleagues and decision-makers understand the changing nature of refrigerants as they make the transition to low GWP refrigerants a reality.

But countries around the world must do their part and ratify the Kigali amendment as a matter of urgency to protect our planet and provide the legal certainty needed to invest in future-oriented technologies. The industry stands ready to finish the journey by using more energy-efficient cooling equipment and climate-friendly refrigerants.

You can choose any color or a mix of colors. If you'd like a specific mix you can send me a convo and let me know exactly what you'd like, no worries.

Oh, and do know this... When we advertise Rolo necklaces, we actually send you high quality Rolo necklaces, not the flat cable chain that some are trying to pass off as Rolo. Please use the photo in this listing as a reference for what Rolo necklaces actually look like.

If you don't already have some of our Sun And Moon Glaze, you'll need some and you'll find it here:http://www.etsy.com/shop/SunAndMoonCraftKits?section_id=5478821

Let us know if you would like a different quantity, we can fill any small or large orders.

•:*¨¨*:• If this is your first time making photo pendant kits, I highly suggest you start with the glass pieces before you even place them in the trays because you want the image under the glass to be perfect or without bubbles or glittery effects before you place them in the trays. If you have any issues send me a message and I will give you my phone number or we can talk through convo to make sure everything is correct before you start the rest of the project. With every purchase you will receive a tutorial so don't worry. It's not rocket science but it will be a blast in it's own way. I have always said it is very ADDICTIVE when you start creating some of these pieces. Trust me, I do know! We LoVe creating and finding new pieces that we can bring to you! Xo, Gina •:*¨¨*:•

Need something else to watch after all the results come in? Tonight NASA's launching a mission to explore Earth's ionosphere, but this isn't the average rocket launch. The Ionospheric Connection Explorer (ICON) will take off on a Northrop Grumman Peg...

The NBA season is heating up with nearly every team reaching the 10-game mark. Some teams, such as the Oklahoma City Thunder or Houston Rockets, have strung together a few wins to get their seasons back on track. Others, like the Golden State Warriors or Boston Celtics, demonstrated why they're still

Houston Rockets' James Harden goes to the basket against Indiana Pacers' Victor Oladipo during the first half of an NBA basketball game, Monday, Nov. 5, 2018, in Indianapolis. INDIANAPOLIS (AP) - James Harden made a tiebreaking 3-pointer with 34.8 seconds left and then closed out the Houston

Compare, say, the Sacramento Kings, with one of the most surprising records in the league at 6-4, and the Charlotte Hornets, sitting at 5-5. It's huge for Sacramento to bust out its best start in four seasons. Consider that the Kings' five-game winning streak didn't exactly come against a

@Crustina Rae, When there is an active shooter, police will come from every direction. They are at the highest level of alertness to such calls. They will have massive amounts of manpower as well as military grade weapons. What this accomplishes is a massive show of force as well as the highest level of officer safety. What does this do, more often then not it de-escalates the situation. This is why mass shooters are often brought in alive.

During routine police work, a police officer has to make split second life and death decisions, without tactical gear, manpower, or general information about that situation. This is often why police shootings with solo officers happen more.

Patrick Kimmons was lawfullyshot under Tennessee vs. Garner. Yes there was a rational belief that Patrick would shoot and possibly kill someone else. This means he can be legally shot in the back. As for amounts of shots, one vs nine does not matter. For an officer to fire his weapon once, there is only leathal force. One shot is intended to kill, as is nine. It does not matter. There is no way you shoot to disarm. Please look diagram of arteries and veins in the human body. You will see why you cannot shoot to wound. What if you shoot someone in the leg intending to wound and they bleed to death from a bullet cutting the femeral artery. Yep you guessed it lawsuits and protests everywhere.

Now onto white people getting food after a mass shooting. The station Dylan Roof was taking to does not offer food. Why is this important, Mr Roof if not fed could claim a violation of his civil right to no unnecessary cruel and unusual punishment. The officers by giving him food prevent him from using this as an excuse in court. It is also a tactic to build trust with a suspectvto get them to confess. Also please look at a map where he was arrested, the closest food was Burger King. You should applaud these officers for making sure that a vile piece of human excrement like Roof would never see the light of day again.

Please take time to understand the law, the human body, and depolicing. Yes depolicing. This is what happens when officers are affraid to perform their jobs due to perceived no win environments. What causes this feeling? Protesters who have no clue what they are talking about. Activists who protest on behalf of murdering gangbangers. Activists who threaten the lives of officers and their families. Activists who interfere with police work with cameras. Activists who block city streets preventing emergency vehicles from taking sick children to the hospital. Depolicing cause spike in crime In Low income areas. Murder rates sky rocket. See Baltimore pre and post riot. So please ask yourself who are you really harming.

Lastly sign the F up to the police department if you think you can do better!

How saving even unsung historic buildings keeps the city’s character intact.

Our town is nothing if not giddy these days with each announcement of a planning or development scheme. Vision statements and building starts percolate daily from many directions, or so it seems. A James River Park System plan, revising the downtown plan, a proposal to eliminate Monroe Ward's surface parking lots, the $1.4 billion dollar Coliseum-Navy Hill redevelopment, replacing the Diamond, establishing a historic district in Blackwell, and a sweeping, updated master plan for Virginia Commonwealth University are all in the works.

Then there are ideas to improve the Jefferson Davis Highway corridor, build new housing on the site of old Armstrong High School, develop a medical building at the former Westhampton School, and conducting an international design competition for re-imagining Confederate-infused Monument Avenue.

Scott's Addition and Manchester continue to blossom, while along Brookland Park Boulevard and its vicinity, developers are shifting pedestrian-scaled projects into gear. Meanwhile building cranes loom over downtown, Jackson Ward and the flood wall on both sides of the river. Newly topped-off buildings punctuate the Manchester and Financial District skylines as site plans are flying off drawing boards for taller residential buildings along the path of the Pulse.

And this just in: Public input from a recent Richmond Times-Dispatch public square meeting included one on the 75 item wish list: to ramp up the city's population to 500,000.

Whew.

But here's the thing, in our rush to be macro — that is, taller, faster, denser, more intensive and more inclusive — we need to keep a cautious and protective focus on the micro. That entails holding tightly to the things that make Richmond, well, Richmond.

Of course, a list of what those things entail varies depending on whom you ask, but many agree that Richmond is predisposed to conservatism, for better or worse. This go-slowly attitude means that the region is emerging from some relatively sleepy decades, compared to the go-go, boom-boom aggressiveness of such cities to the south as Charlotte, Atlanta and Miami. This also means that Richmond has maintained much of the architectural soul of what makes it special, even quirky. Many of our old and newer historic neighborhoods, from Church Hill and Woodland Heights to Barton Heights, Hermitage Road and Lakeside to Scott's Addition, have never looked better.

However, disturbing things can accompany so-called progress, even in a city that proceeds with caution.

While the dizzying growth of VCU is, on balance, positive, the population and physical expansion have presented some cautionary situations. In Oregon Hill, after years of attempting to balance town vs. gown dynamics while repenting for the sins of demolishing hundreds of houses for the Downtown Expressway, for instance, something unfortunate occurred recently. This past spring, a solidly built row of modest but dignified and handsome antebellum buildings in the 800 block of West Cary Street was demolished. It is being replaced with a 100-unit apartment building — providing needed housing, of course — but offering zilch in architectural interest in exchange for the loss. With a modicum of imagination, and another pass or two at tweaking the design, the irreplaceable historic structures could have been woven into the plan, maintaining a link to the neighborhood's past and applying historic preservation tax credits to financing the project. It would have been the right thing to do.

While the Pulse bus system has added new visual energy to a 7-mile urban and suburban corridor from Willow Lawn to Rocketts Landing, planners are seeking to intensify housing along the route with taller buildings within a zone that planners are calling a "transit-oriented nodal district."

It didn't take long for one developer to announce his concept for building a 12-story chain hotel a block north of the 17th Street Farmers' Market at 127 N. 17th Street. Sadly, this would inject the first high-rise building into the tissue of Shockoe Bottom, a district of old, low-lying buildings, mostly fewer than five stories. It is one of our city's most evocative places, and probably sacred as well, with the still-untapped reservoir of painful stories to be researched and told regarding decades of slave trading that occurred here.

The developer of the proposed hotel did offer an extenuating olive branch: His intent is to weave the century-old Weiman's Bakery building that occupies the site into the plan — and gain historic tax credits for the gesture. Would that other developers showed the same, well, if in not quite sensitivity, at least savvy.

Three projects now in the works provide similar cases.

Arguments are back and forth on the fate of the Intermediate Terminal No. 3 near Rocketts Landing. Stone Brewing Co. had promised to convert the concrete warehouse, built in 1939, into a destination pub and restaurant at the hulking remnant from Richmond's time as a transfer point for sugar from the Caribbean. But it reneged, citing the structure's instability. Meanwhile opposing lines have been drawn to whether the building is even historic or not.

Since officials at the state's Department of Historic Resources withheld its approval of a historic designation, corporate and city officials consider this a pass.

"The complex has lost integrity of setting, design, materials, workmanship, feeling and appreciation," weighed in another local historian, "Interpreting and advancing the story of the commercial shipping history in Richmond does not hinge on salvaging a structure that rests in a flood plain and is beset by numerous structural issues. The history of Rockets Landing and its environs can be told eloquently and artfully absent this decaying building."

But in determining what is historic we might apply United States Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's 1964 definition of pornography to what is old and historic: "I know it when I see it." If the Intermediate Terminal is the last survivor of what were once scores of riverfront buildings serving Richmond's maritime glory days, come on folks, it's historic.

And why would we even consider tearing down this 79-year-old commercial building? Restored, or left as a glorious empty vessel, it can be the building block, if not centerpiece, of whatever Stone Brewing might build nearby. Rather than either or, let's have old and new.

Consider. One reason our community has been slow to appropriately develop a visual narrative of the slave trade in Shockoe Bottom is that only one building still stands related to the heinous business. Old and historic buildings, architecturally distinguished or not, can be critical starting points when seeking to link the present and past. Lose the buildings and we lose that connection.

The same holds true of a threatened, 168-year-old building on West Cary Street near Nansemond Street that most recently housed a popular restaurant, Carytown Burger & Fries. The general consensus has long been that this worthy and solid, if battered, brick structure was a toll house during much of the 19th century when Cary was named the Westham Plank Road. The rustic highway, laid in dirt and wooden boards, connected Richmond with points west to the mountains along the James River.

Whether or not the toll taker actually lived here, is no big deal here in the 21st century. Today, it is the oldest house in the Museum District and more solid than most of the mid-20th centuries buildings that surround it. The historic resources department has decreed that it's not distinguished enough to receive historic designation. Maybe not, but it's at least 178 years old, for crying out loud. We're not going to have any more like it. Come on, save the darn building. The developer's description of the architectural plan for the proposed complex — a grocery store, parking deck and strip of shops— waxes poetic about how it will fit in with the historic aspects of Carytown. Such banter is cringe-worthy in the face of the loss of this tiny survivor of an important chapter in the neighborhood's history.

Similar goofiness is afoot in Scott's Addition.

It's shocking that a new apartment complex planned for Scott's Addition at West Broad and Summit calls for demolishing an architecturally elegant former SunTrust branch bank now on the site. The one-story, 10,000-square-foot building, built in 1948, is a top-notch colonial revival building that was built on the eve of modernism in Richmond. Its doorways and windows are handsome and its red bricks are laid in the Flemish bond pattern. If one squinted, it wouldn't be hard to imagine this as a house in Windsor Farms or Westmoreland Place where it would fetch $2 million and upwards. In fact, it was probably designed to catch the eye and serve folks who lived in those and less grand West End neighborhoods.

But despite it being a contributing historic structure to the official Scott's Addition Historic District, it is considered expendable to make way for a 166-unit apartment complex. The Summit, from what one can tell from a published rendering, has all the heft and charm of an Ocean City, Maryland, motel, complete with the name of the complex displayed in stacked letters on a prominent exterior wall.

Along with the glorious Handcraft Cleaners Building, a moderne masterwork, and the Blue Bee Cidery, with its rusticated cobblestone walls, this former bank is among the handsomest buildings in Scott's Addition. So why is it being demolished?

Probably for lack of effort or thought. Like the doomed, so-called toll house in Carytown, this classical gem, for some the gold standard in what Richmond domestic-scaled architecture is all about, could easily have been woven into the fabric of the larger development — and add grace notes to an otherwise ordinary design.

I know. We can't save everything. But that's the point: In the case of the Intermediate Terminal and the toll keeper's house everything else is gone. They are sole survivors. The former branch bank, that channels the spirit of Sir Christopher Wren, a late Renaissance English architect, is a standout because it is 180 degrees different from the stash of undistinguished midcentury modern warehouses that populate most of Scott's Addition. Ironically, it is the rare architectural outlier in a neighborhood that prides itself on being über cool.

These and other survivors and outliers are at risk. We shouldn't sacrifice what's left of our distinctive architectural patrimony for a transit-oriented nodal district. S

Author William Knoedelseder talks to Adam about the golden age of cars, his experiences with Andy Kaufman, and his work with the LA Times. Plus, Jeff Cesario returns with the Chet Waterhouse Update.
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Author William Knoedelseder talks to Adam about the golden age of cars, his experiences with Andy Kaufman, and his work with the LA Times. Plus, Jeff Cesario returns with the Chet Waterhouse Update.
PLEASE SUPPORT TODAY’S SPONSORS!
Quicken Loans: Go to Rocketmortgage.com/ADAM
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Castrol Challenge: Tweet us your car questions @AdamCarollaShow with the hashtag Castrol Challenge
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It looks like "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," the game whose success paved the way for "Fortnite: Battle Royale," is coming to the PlayStation 4.

The game hasn't officially been announced, but files for the game are present in the PlayStation 4 game database, and the online PSN store.

"PUBG" is one of the most popular action games on PC, but it's been console exclusive to the Xbox One for the past year.

It looks like "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," the game that is largely credited with sparking the popularity of battle royale shooting games like "Fortnite: Battle Royale," is set for release on PlayStation 4.

While Bluehole, the game's developer, has yet to confirm a PS4 release date, fans have discovered files on PlayStation 4 consoles and in Sony's online PlayStation Network store. Last month the South Korean Game Rating and Administration Committee leaked ratings for a PlayStation 4 version of the game as well. A representative for the game declined to comment.

"PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds," or "PUBG," was officially released on PC in May 2017 and has been console exclusive to the Xbox One since December 2017. The game was in Microsoft's Xbox Game Preview program until September 4th, when version 1.0 was officially released. The mobile version of the game is also one of the most popular video games in China.

Like "Fortnite: Battle Royale" and other games that it inspired, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" throws 100 players onto a single map with scattered resources. Players need to find weapons and items to defend themselves as the safe areas of the map begin to shrink. The last player or team surviving at the end of the round is the winner.

Though "PUBG" helped pioneer the battle royale genre, the game has seen its star wane, even as rivals like "Fortnite" have skyrocketed to success and challengers like "Call of Duty's" Blackout and "Battlefield V's" Firestorm continue to crop up. and. "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" has a smaller development team than those games and has struggled to keep up with the demands of a massive community.

In November of 2017, "PUBG" was averaging 1.3 million players each day, according to SteamCharts, which tracks players on Steam, the most popular platform for PC games. The average number of daily "PUBG" players has since dwindled to about 450,000 over the last 30 days.

Still, "PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" remains one of the three most popular games on Steam by a wide margin, alongside "Dota 2" and "CounterStrike: Global Offensive."

With "PUBG" available on multiple platforms, players are wondering if Bluehole will be able to implement cross-platform play. Earlier this year "Fortnite" became the first game to offer cross-platform play between the Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC, and mobile devices. Bluehole has expressed interest in allowing cross-platform play in the past, but nothing has been confirmed.

"PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds" is currently available on PC and Xbox One for $29.99. This hypothetical PS4 version will likely carry a similar price.

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